Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers has identified the most distant and earliest known pair of quasars powered by supermassive black holes. Designated J1602+4228AB and given the Hawaiian name Nāpōwawāʻenakaulua—translated as “Two celestial bodies of fathomless powerful darkness in the brilliance of heat reincarnating energy into the universe”—the duo was observed as it existed roughly 900 million years after the Big Bang.
Discovery and Characteristics
The pair was first flagged in the JWST Aether survey, a program that maps objects from the universe’s infancy. The survey, which employs the telescope’s Near‑Infrared Spectrograph Integral Field Unit (NIRSpec IFU), has cataloged about 200 quasars, accounting for just under half of all early‑universe quasars known to date. While examining the dataset, researchers noted that quasar J1602+4228A possessed a nearby companion, now labeled J1602+4228B.
Follow‑up observations with the Gemini North telescope on Maunakea, aided by exceptionally clear weather, resolved the two sources despite their tight separation of roughly 18,100 light‑years—about one‑fifth the Milky Way’s diameter. The black holes at the centers of the quasars have estimated masses of 1.5 billion and 400 million times that of the Sun, making them comparable in size to the most massive black holes seen in the present‑day universe.
Implications for Black Hole Growth
According to team leader Silvia Onorato of NOIRLab, the existence of such massive black holes at a cosmic age of only one‑thirteenth of the universe’s current age is unexpected. She noted, “There is no definitive theoretical explanation for how a single one of these giant quasars exists so early in the age of our universe, much less two.” The findings add to a growing body of JWST discoveries that have identified supermassive black holes powering quasars as early as 400 million years after the Big Bang, a period traditionally thought to be too brief for black holes to attain billions of solar masses.
The rarity of compact quasar pairs adds another layer of intrigue. While galaxy mergers that bring together supermassive black holes are thought to be frequent, detecting close‑separation pairs is challenging. The quasar phase of a black hole is relatively short on cosmic timescales, and the great distances involved render such objects faint and difficult to resolve with ground‑based instruments. Nevertheless, the detection of Nāpōwawāʻenakaulua marks the third quasar pair identified from the Cosmic Dawn era, suggesting that current models of black‑hole growth and galaxy assembly may require revision.
Observational Challenges and Future Study
Quasars shine because gas and dust swirling in an accretion disk around a supermassive black hole heat up and emit intense radiation, often outshining the combined light of their host galaxies. Isolating individual quasars within a tightly bound pair at such extreme distances pushes the limits of existing telescopes. The successful resolution by Gemini North demonstrates how optimal atmospheric conditions can complement space‑based observations.
Onorato described Nāpōwawāʻenakaulua as “a really unique environment,” likening it to a laboratory where astronomers can probe the assembly of the first massive galaxies and their central black holes through direct interactions. The team’s results were published on 10 November in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, providing a new data point that could help refine theories of early galaxy formation and black‑hole evolution.
Helene Elliott is the Lead Science & Space Reporter at News Raise. She reports on aerospace missions, astrophysics discoveries, quantum research, and environmental technology.
