James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

COSW-106725: the most distant quasar candidate

In a paper from a few days ago, a research group reported "the discovery of the highest redshift, heavily obscured, radio-loud QSO (Quasi-Stellar Object - quasar) candidate selected using JWST NIRCam/MIRI, mid-IR, sub-mm, and radio imaging in the COSMOS-Web field". Based on JWST data, they identified "a powerful, radio-loud (RL), growing supermassive black hole (SMBH) with significant spectral steepening of the radio SED". The galaxy that hosts the quasar was called an extremely massive z~7.65 galaxy with an estimated mind-blowing mass of over 831 billion suns. Its z~7.65 redshift places it less than billion years after the Big Bang and ~12.9 billion light years from us (when the light start traveling), which should be almost 25 billion light years by now due to the expansion of the universe. This discovery still needs JWST/NIRSpec confirmation. At the end of the paper abstract, they mentioned that this Radio-Loud source "represents the furthest known obscured RL QSO candidate, and its level of obscuration aligns with the most representative but observationally scarce population of QSOs at these epochs". A similiar quasar was given the name COS-87259. This quasar was named COSW-106725. Click on the image below for images of the quasar or the title for the paper.