Monster at early cosmos party

A new learning curve for exploration of early galactic nature is emphasized in the reexamination of the early galaxy called Virgil according to the Steward Observatory at U of Arizona.

Virgil is a known galaxy by the Hubble Extreme Field, but on reexamination of its spectra, it is housing an "overmassive" black hole that was not earlier detected by optical or ultra violet search.

"JWST has shown that our idea about how supermassive black holes formed were pretty much completely wrong.", says Rieke, Regents professor. "It looks like the black holes  actually get ahead of the galaxies."

What has uncovered the hidden nature is the MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), Earlier instruments led Virgil to be an ordinary star-forming galaxy. MIRI exposed a ravaging, dust obscured black hole consuming and expelling huge quantities of energy and may outsize its host galaxy.

The galaxy is believed to exist some 800 million years after inception of the cosmos. It appears with other "little red dots' early in the cosmos history, most of which have since demised.

The discovery my MIRI sets a new pattern by which to survey the nature of galaxies, and those of reionization 100-200 million years after inception.

"Are we simply blind to its siblings because equally deep MIRI data have not yet been obtained over large regions of the sky?", asks Rinaldi.

"Remarkably, no other source with Virgil's  extraordinary traits  has been reported as such early cosmic times."

The paper is submitted to "The Astrophysical Journal" under P. Rinaldi.

This article is obtained via Phys.Org, Dec. 11, 2025.