Euclid finds the most ancient quasars known, from the Universe's first 670 million years

European Space Agency/Euclid

Using Wide Survey data, astronomers found 31 new early-Universe quasars, 12 at redshift 7 or above, more than doubling the known number that old. The two most distant, at redshifts 7.77 and 7.69, beat the 2021 record of 7.64. Earlier searches needed over a decade to find the first ten such quasars; Euclid found more in a single year.

• Published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, led by Daming Yang of Leiden University.
• Both record holders lie just over 13 billion light-years away.
• Quasars this early test how giant black holes grew so fast after the Big Bang.