File:Black Hole Existed 570 Million Years After Big Bang (NIRSpec MSA Emission Spectrum) (53029197057).png

English: In a survey of 100,000 galaxies (called Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science, or CEERS), Webb spotted the most distant active supermassive black hole to date, plus two more small early black holes and 11 early galaxies. All of these objects existed in the first 1.1 billion years after the big bang.

Read more: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/webb-detects-most-dista...

This image: Researchers have identified the most distant active supermassive black hole to date in the James Webb Space Telescope’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey. The black hole, within galaxy CEERS 1019, existed just over 570 million years after the big bang and weighs only 9 million solar masses. For context, the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy is 4.6 million times the mass of the Sun, and other very distant supermassive black holes we’ve known about for decades typically weigh more than 1 billion times the mass of the Sun.

Credits: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Leah Hustak (STScI). Science: Steven Finkelstein (University of Texas at Austin), Rebecca Larson (University of Texas at Austin), Pablo Arrabal Haro (NOIRLab).

Image description: A graphic titled “Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, Black Hole Existed 570 Million Years After Big Bang.” The graphic shows the redshift (how long ago the light was emitted) of one active supermassive black hole. At top right is a very small zoomed out version of the complete galaxy field. To its left is a zoomed-in area. It shows an assortment of galaxies, but has an inset box singling out 3 red dots, 2 with a green tint. This group is labeled CEERS 1019, 13.2 billion years. It shows a black hole from 13.2 billion years ago. The bottom shows a line graph with data from Webb’s NIRSpec. It plots wavelength of light in microns on the x-axis and relative brightness of light on the y-axis. Webb data is shown as an uneven white line and fitted to 2 different models. One is a smooth purple line with a large peak, representing slower gas in the galaxy. The other is a smooth yellow line with a small peak, representing faster gas around the black hole.