Overview
- The Euclid team reported on Monday that the space telescope identified 31 quasars from the epoch of reionisation, more than doubling the known population at redshift z≈7 and above.
- Two objects in the sample set new redshift records at z = 7.77 and z = 7.69, which corresponds to light emitted about 670 million years after the Big Bang.
- Euclid’s wide, deep near-infrared survey made the discoveries possible by finding fainter and rarer early quasars than ground-based searches could detect.
- Early follow-up shows at least one quasar sits in a dusty, gas-rich galaxy with vigorous star formation, and teams will use JWST and other telescopes to obtain spectra and host-galaxy measurements.
- The larger sample sharpens the central cosmic puzzle of how billion-solar-mass black holes assembled so quickly and will enable population studies and updated growth models as new data are analysed.