JWST Spots 'Black Hole Star' From Universe's First 660 Million Years

A team of astronomers has identified what they're calling a new class of astrophysical object, one that looks like a star the size of the solar system but is powered by a rapidly growing black hole buried inside a dense cocoon of gas.

The object, designated MoM-BH*-1, was reported in a study published August 12 in Nature. <cite index="17-3">The paper, led by Rohan Naidu of the University of Hawai'i Institute for Astronomy, describes MoM-BH*-1 as a supermassive black hole in the universe's first 660 million years, so thoroughly enveloped in dense, turbulent gas that it radiates like a star while growing at rates standard accretion physics can't easily explain.</cite>

<cite index="22-5,22-6">The authors propose that "black hole stars" are a new kind of astrophysical object, specifically black holes enshrouded in dense gas such that they effectively radiate in a star-like manner, with the dense envelope giving the black hole its star-like spectral features.</cite> The central black hole is estimated to be roughly 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, and <cite index="22-7">black hole stars of this type are more than 100,000 times larger than the Sun, spanning roughly 1,000 astronomical units, a size comparable to black hole accretion disks.</cite>

The defining measurement is a spectral feature called the Balmer break, a sharp drop in brightness at ultraviolet wavelengths caused by hydrogen absorption. <cite index="19-11">In MoM-BH*-1, this spectral jump is exceptionally strong, stronger than those seen in star-forming galaxies, dust-free stellar populations, or the mysterious little red dots.</cite> <cite index="17-1">The Balmer break value of 7.7 is stronger than any known stellar population.</cite>

The little red dots context matters here. <cite index="20-2">Since JWST began science operations in 2022, its deep images of the distant universe have repeatedly turned up compact, extremely red sources that astronomers quickly labeled "little red dots," whose brightness, color, and number at early cosmic times challenged standard expectations for both young galaxies and ordinary accreting black holes.</cite> <cite index="19-5">The newly identified object may resemble the powering engines behind hundreds of those mysterious little red dots that the team found in JWST datasets in 2024.</cite>

The discovery wasn't intentional. <cite index="17-6">JWST detected MoM-BH*-1 in the "Mirage or Miracle" survey (program GO-5224), which targeted high-redshift objects specifically because their unusual signatures might be either spectacular discoveries or interlopers.</cite> The name stuck.

What the paper doesn't settle is how common these objects are, how long the gas cocoon phase lasts, or exactly how they connect to the broader population of little red dots. <cite index="11-3">How common these objects were, how long the gas cocoon phase lasts, and whether they represent a rapid pathway to the first supermassive black holes remain active research topics.</cite> The authors also note that the black-hole-star model is their preferred explanation, not a confirmed one. <cite index="20-11">Alternative models remain under active investigation.</cite>

There's also a longer-standing puzzle this finding pushes on. Billion-solar-mass black holes appear in the observational record surprisingly early, faster than conventional slow-accretion models predict. <cite index="21-2">If confirmed, black hole stars could help solve one of astronomy's biggest puzzles: how supermassive black holes grew so quickly in the universe's infancy.</cite> The gas-enshrouded, super-Eddington accretion scenario the authors describe is one proposed solution, but it'll need more examples to stick.

<cite index="22-10">A preprint announcing MoM-BH*-1 appeared on arXiv on March 20, 2025, alongside a report of a similar source at the "cosmic noon" epoch, roughly 2 to 3 billion years after the Big Bang, nicknamed "The Cliff."</cite> <cite index="22-11,22-12">The simultaneous discovery of two such sources helped build community consensus that this is indeed a new class of objects, and scientists now say the spectra can serve as templates to guide new searches.</cite>

The peer-reviewed result is in the right journal and the detection itself is solid JWST spectroscopy. The interpretive leap, that MoM-BH*-1 represents a previously unnamed class and that it solves the little-red-dots problem, is where the community will spend the next several years stress-testing the claim.

Sources cited:
- Nature (Naidu et al., 2026) (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10846-4)
- ISTA press release via EurekAlert (https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1139484)
- Phys.org (https://phys.org/news/2026-08-mirage-miracle-jwst-earliest-black.html)
- TechExplorist (https://www.techexplorist.com/brand-new-type-astrophysical-object-discovered-black-hole-star/103936/)
- TechTimes (https://www.techtimes.com/articles/324158/20260812/jwst-finds-black-hole-star-spectral-signature-no-star-can-match-super-eddington-growth-confirmed.htm)