New James Webb telescope image may reveal the true identity of 'little red dots' — Space photo of the week

Astronomers have discovered that those enigmatic "little red dots" spotted in deep-space photographs from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope may not be entirely mysterious after all. The tiny, crimson-colored smudges have puzzled scientists for years, appearing in huge numbers around 600 million years after the Big Bang but vanishing less than a billion years later.

Researchers believe they could be a new type of galaxy or something unexpected entirely. However, fresh observations from JWST, along with data from Hubble and Chandra X-ray Observatory, suggest a different explanation. Instead of disappearing, these puzzling objects may have simply transformed as the universe expanded. Researchers aimed their telescope at the Saguaro galaxy, a relatively nearby spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major.

Despite existing around 3.3 billion years after the Big Bang, the Saguaro has a compact, reddish core that matches the characteristics of an LRD, including weak X-ray emissions. By simulating what the galaxy would look like at vast distances seen in early universe images, researchers found that its spiral arms and central core fade into darkness, leaving only a tiny glowing red point - similar to the LRDs seen in JWST's deep-field images.

This discovery implies that many LRDs might be ordinary galaxies at such great distances, with only their active centers visible, while the surrounding galaxies fade beyond JWST's capacity. The researchers now plan to search for more galaxies like the Saguaro to build a catalog of LRDs and better understand the growth of supermassive black holes during the universe's early stages.