The discovery of two little red dots in transition into quasars

Furtak, L. J. et al. JWST UNCOVER: extremely red and compact object at z phot ≈ 7.6 triply imaged by A2744. Astrophys. J. 952, 142 (2023).

Matthee, J. et al. Little red dots: an abundant population of faint active galactic nuclei at z ~ 5 revealed by the EIGER and FRESCO JWST surveys. Astrophys. J. 963, 129 (2024).

Setton, D. J. et al. Little red dots at an inflection point: ubiquitous V-shaped turnover consistently occurs at the Balmer limit. Astrophys. J. 995, 118 (2025).

Kocevski, D. D. et al. The rise of faint, red active galactic nuclei at z > 4: a sample of little red dots in the JWST Extragalactic Legacy Fields. Astrophys. J. 986, 126 (2025).

Guia, C. A., Pacucci, F. & Kocevski, D. D. Sizes and stellar masses of the little red dots imply immense stellar densities. Res. Not. Am. Astron. Soc. 8, 207 (2024).

Furtak, L. J. et al. Investigating photometric and spectroscopic variability in the multiply imaged little red dot A2744−QSO1. Astron. Astrophys. 698, A227 (2025).

Greene, J. E. et al. UNCOVER spectroscopy confirms the surprising ubiquity of active galactic nuclei in red sources at z > 5. Astrophys. J. 964, 39 (2024).

Zhang, Z., Jiang, L., Liu, W., Ho, L. C. & Inayoshi, K. JWST insights into narrow-line little red dots. Astrophys. J. 998, 170 (2026).

Maiolino, R. et al. JWST meets Chandra: a large population of Compton thick, feedback-free, and intrinsically X-ray weak AGN, with a sprinkle of SNe. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 538, 1921–1943 (2025).

Yue, M. et al. Stacking X-ray observations of ‘little red dots’: implications for their active galactic nucleus properties. Astrophys. J. Lett. 974, L26 (2024).

Akins, H. B. et al. COSMOS-Web: the overabundance and physical nature of ‘little red dots’—implications for early galaxy and SMBH assembly. Astrophys. J. 991, 37 (2025).

Pérez-González, P. G. et al. What is the nature of little red dots and what is not, MIRI SMILES edition. Astrophys. J. 968, 4 (2024).

Mazzolari, G. et al. The radio properties of the JWST-discovered AGN. Astron. Astrophys. 706, A372 (2026).

Lin, X. et al. A Spectroscopic Survey of Biased Halos In the Reionization Era (ASPIRE): broad-line AGN at z = 4−5 revealed by JWST/NIRCam WFSS. Astrophys. J. 974, 147 (2024).

Juodžbalis, I. et al. JADES: comprehensive census of broad-line AGN from reionization to cosmic noon revealed by JWST. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 546, stag086 (2026).

Kido, D., Ioka, K., Hotokezaka, K., Inayoshi, K. & Irwin, C. M. Black hole envelopes in little red dots. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 544, 3407–3416 (2025).

Inayoshi, K. & Maiolino, R. Extremely dense gas around little red dots and high-redshift active galactic nuclei: a nonstellar origin of the balmer break and absorption features. Astrophys. J. Lett. 980, L27 (2025).

Ji, X. et al. BlackTHUNDER—a non-stellar Balmer break in a black hole-dominated little red dot at z = 7.04. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 544, 3900–3935 (2025).

Kokubo, M. & Harikane, Y. Challenging the active galactic nucleus scenario for JWST/NIRSpec little red dot and non–little red dot broad Hα emitters in light of nondetection of NIRCam photometric variability and X-ray. Astrophys. J. 995, 24 (2025).

Zhang, Z., Jiang, L., Liu, W. & Ho, L. C. Analysis of multi-epoch JWST images of ~300 little red dots: tentative detection of variability in a minority of sources. Astrophys. J. 985, 119 (2025).

Inayoshi, K., Kimura, S. S. & Noda, H. Weakness of X-rays and variability in high-redshift active galactic nuclei with super-Eddington accretion. Publ. Astron. Soc. Jpn 77, 811–822 (2025).

Ma, Y. et al. Counting little red dots at z < 4 with ground-based surveys and spectroscopic follow-up. Astrophys. J. 1000, 59 (2026).

Tanaka, T. S. et al. Discovery of a little red dot candidate at z ≳ 10 in COSMOS-web based on MIRI-NIRCam selection. Astrophys. J. 995, 21 (2025).

Inayoshi, K. Little red dots as the very first activity of black hole growth. Astrophys. J. Lett. 988, L22 (2025).

Juodžbalis, I. et al. JADES—the Rosetta stone of JWST-discovered AGN: deciphering the intriguing nature of early AGN. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 535, 853–873 (2024).

Lin, X. et al. The discovery of little red dots in the local universe: signatures of cool gas envelopes. Astrophys. J. 997, 364 (2026).

Wang, B. et al. RUBIES: JWST/NIRSpec confirmation of an infrared-luminous, broad-line little red dot with an ionized outflow. Astrophys. J. 984, 121 (2025).

Inayoshi, K., Onoue, M., Sugahara, Y., Inoue, A. K. & Ho, L. C. The age of discovery with the James Webb Space Telescope: excavating the spectral signatures of the first massive black holes. Astrophys. J. Lett. 931, L25 (2022).

Landt, H. et al. A near-infrared relationship for estimating black hole masses in active galactic nuclei. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 432, 113–126 (2013).

Zhang, S. et al. Reddening and He I 10830 absorption lines in three narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies. Astrophys. J. 845, 126 (2017).

Hamann, F., Tripp, T. M., Rupke, D. & Veilleux, S. On the emergence of THOUSANDS of absorption lines in the quasar PG 1411+442: a clumpy high-column density outflow from the broad emission-line region? Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 487, 5041–5061 (2019).

Hasinger, G. et al. The XMM-Newton Wide-Field Survey in the COSMOS Field. I. Survey description. Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser. 172, 29–37 (2007).

Civano, F. et al. The Chandra Cosmos Legacy Survey: overview and point source catalog. Astrophys. J. 819, 62 (2016).

Timlin, I., John, D. et al. The frequency of extreme X-ray variability for radio-quiet quasars. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 498, 4033–4050 (2020).

Zhang, Z. et al. On the extremely X-ray variable active galactic nuclei in the XMM-LSS field. Astrophys. J. 983, 36 (2025).

Steffen, A. T. et al. The X-ray-to-optical properties of optically selected active galaxies over wide luminosity and redshift ranges. Astron. J. 131, 2826–2842 (2006).

Smolčić, V. et al. The VLA-COSMOS 3 GHz Large Project: continuum data and source catalog release. Astron. Astrophys. 602, A1 (2017).

Schinnerer, E. et al. The VLA-COSMOS Survey. I. Radio identifications from the pilot project. Astron. J. 128, 1974–1989 (2004).

Wang, Y., Wang, T., Ho, L. C., Zhong, Y. & Luo, B. The fundamental plane of black hole activity for low-luminosity radio active galactic nuclei across 0 < z < 4. Astron. Astrophys. 689, A327 (2024).

Chen, C.-H., Ho, L. C., Li, R. & Inayoshi, K. The physical nature of the off-center extended emission associated with the little red dots. Astrophys. J. Lett. 989, L12 (2025).

Zhang, Y. et al. Unveiling extended components of ‘little red dots’ in rest-frame optical. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.25830 (2025).

Rinaldi, P. et al. Not just a dot: the complex UV morphology and underlying properties of little red dots. Astrophys. J. 992, 71 (2025).

Liu, H., Jiang, Y.-F., Quataert, E., Greene, J. E. & Ma, Y. The Balmer break and optical continuum of little red dots from super-Eddington accretion. Astrophys. J. 994, 113 (2025).

Rusakov, V. et al. Little red dots as young supermassive black holes in dense ionized cocoons. Nature 649, 574–579 (2026).

Delvecchio, I. et al. Active galactic nuclei-heated dust revealed in ‘little red dots’. Astron. Astrophys. 704, A313 (2025).

Clarke, L. et al. The star-forming main sequence in JADES and CEERS at z > 1.4: investigating the burstiness of star formation. Astrophys. J. 977, 133 (2024).

Yang, L. et al. COSMOS-Web: unraveling the evolution of galaxy size and related properties at 2 < z < 10. Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser. 281, 68 (2025).

Kashino, D. et al. The 2175 Å dust feature in star-forming galaxies at 1.3 ≤ z ≤ 1.8: the dependence on stellar mass and specific star formation rate. Astrophys. J. 909, 213 (2021).

Tang, M. et al. JWST/NIRSpec observations of high-ionization emission lines in galaxies at high redshift. Astrophys. J. 991, 217 (2025).

Wang, B. et al. RUBIES: evolved stellar populations with extended formation histories at z ~ 7–8 in candidate massive galaxies identified with JWST/NIRSpec. Astrophys. J. Lett. 969, L13 (2024).

Casey, C. M. et al. COSMOS-Web: an overview of the JWST Cosmic Origins Survey. Astrophys. J. 954, 31 (2023).

Alberts, S. et al. SMILES initial data release: unveiling the obscured universe with MIRI multiband imaging. Astrophys. J. 976, 224 (2024).

Aihara, H. et al. Third data release of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program. Publ. Astron. Soc. Jpn 74, 247–272 (2022).

Wang, W.-H. et al. MUSUBI (MegaCam Ultra-deep Survey: u*-band Imaging) data for the COSMOS and SXDS fields. Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser. 260, 54 (2022).

Sanders, D. B. et al. S-COSMOS: the Spitzer Legacy Survey of the Hubble Space Telescope ACS 2 deg2 COSMOS Field I: survey strategy and first analysis. Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser. 172, 86–98 (2007).

Bertin, E. Automated morphometry with SExtractor and PSFEx. In Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XX Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series Vol. 442 (eds Evans, I. N. et al.) 435-448 (Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2011).

Boucaud, A. et al. PyPHER: Python-based PSF Homogenization kERnels. Astrophysics Source Code Library ascl:1609.022 (2016).

Bertin, E. & Arnouts, S. SExtractor: software for source extraction. Astron. Astrophys. Suppl. Ser. 117, 393–404 (1996).

Merlin, E. et al. T-PHOT version 2.0: improved algorithms for background subtraction, local convolution, kernel registration, and new options. Astron. Astrophys. 595, A97 (2016).

Kellermann, K. I., Sramek, R., Schmidt, M., Shaffer, D. B. & Green, R. VLA observations of objects in the Palomar Bright Quasar Survey. Astron. J. 98, 1195 (1989).

Liu, D. et al. Automated mining of the ALMA archive in the COSMOS Field (A3COSMOS). I. Robust ALMA continuum photometry catalogs and stellar mass and star formation properties for ~700 galaxies at z = 0.5–6. Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser. 244, 40 (2019).

McMullin, J. P., Waters, B., Schiebel, D., Young, W. & Golap, K. CASA architecture and applications. In Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XVI Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series Vol. 376 (eds Shaw, R. A. et al.) 127–130 (Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2007).

Chen, K., Zhu, S., Jiang, L. & Zheng, Z. Detection of emission line galaxies in the slitless spectra of HST and CSST. Res. Astron. Astrophys. 25, 025015 (2025).

DESI Collaboration et al. Data Release 1 of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. Astron. J. 171, 285 (2026).

Savage, B. D. & Sembach, K. R. The analysis of apparent optical depth profiles for interstellar absorption lines. Astrophys. J. 379, 245 (1991).

Li, Z.-J. et al. COSMOS-3D: two obscured X-ray AGNs with hot dust and He I λ10830 absorption at z~3. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.02093 (2026).

Lupi, A., Trinca, A., Volonteri, M., Dotti, M. & Mazzucchelli, C. Size matters: are we witnessing super-Eddington accretion in high-redshift black holes from JWST? Astron. Astrophys. 689, A128 (2024).

Shen, X. et al. The bolometric quasar luminosity function at z = 0–7. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 495, 3252–3275 (2020).

Rodríguez-Ardila, A., Viegas, S. M., Pastoriza, M. G., Prato, L. & Donzelli, C. J. The O I line emission in active galactic nuclei revisited. Astrophys. J. 572, 94–104 (2002).

Grandi, S. A. Reddening indicators for quasars and Seyfert 1 galaxies. Astrophys. J. 268, 591–601 (1983).

Newman, A. B. et al. LATIS Data Release: ~4200 spectra of z ~ 2–3 galaxies, redshifts, and intergalactic medium tomography maps. Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser. 281, 32 (2025).

Häußler, B. et al. MegaMorph—multiwavelength measurement of galaxy structure: complete Sérsic profile information from modern surveys. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 430, 330–369 (2013).

Zhuang, M.-Y. & Ho, L. C. Evolutionary paths of active galactic nuclei and their host galaxies. Nat. Astron. 7, 1376–1389 (2023).

Jiang, D., Jiang, L., Sun, S., Liu, W. & Fu, S. AGNs ruled out as the dominant source of cosmic reionization. Nat. Astron. 9, 1890–1897 (2025).

Rodriguez-Gomez, V. et al. The optical morphologies of galaxies in the IllustrisTNG simulation: a comparison to Pan-STARRS observations. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 483, 4140–4159 (2019).

Bradley, L. et al. astropy/photutils: 1.13.0. Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12585239 (2024).

Häussler, B. et al. GEMS: galaxy fitting catalogs and testing parametric galaxy fitting codes: GALFIT and GIM2D. Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser. 172, 615–633 (2007).

Chatzikos, M. et al. The 2023 release of Cloudy. Rev. Mex. Astron. Astrofis. 59, 327–343 (2023).

Koprowski, M. P. et al. Charting the main sequence of star-forming galaxies out to redshifts z ≲ 5.7. Astron. Astrophys. 691, A164 (2024).

Boquien, M. et al. CIGALE: a Python code investigating galaxy emission. Astron. Astrophys. 622, A103 (2019).

Bruzual, G. & Charlot, S. Stellar population synthesis at the resolution of 2003. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 344, 1000–1028 (2003).

Calzetti, D. et al. The dust content and opacity of actively star-forming galaxies. Astrophys. J. 533, 682–695 (2000).

Draine, B. T. et al. Andromeda’s dust. Astrophys. J. 780, 172 (2014).

Jun, H. D. et al. The dust-to-gas ratio and the role of radiation pressure in luminous, obscured quasars. Astrophys. J. 906, 21 (2021).

Gabriel, C. et al. The XMM-Newton SAS—distributed development and maintenance of a large science analysis system: a critical analysis. In Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (ADASS) XIII Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series Vol. 314 (eds Ochsenbein, F. et al). 759-762 (Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2004).

Arnaud, K. A. XSPEC: the first ten years. In Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems V Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series Vol. 101 (Jacoby, G. H. & Barnes, J.) 17–20 (Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 1996).

Shuntov, M. et al. COSMOS2025: the COSMOS-Web galaxy catalog of photometry, morphology, redshifts, and physical parameters from JWST, HST, and ground-based imaging. Astron. Astrophys. 704, A339 (2025).

Fu, S. et al. Medium-band Astrophysics with the Grism of NIRCam In Frontier Fields (MAGNIF): spectroscopic census of Hα luminosity functions and cosmic star formation at z ~ 4.5 and 6.3. Astrophys. J. 987, 186 (2025).

Ross, N. P. et al. The SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: the quasar luminosity function from data release nine. Astrophys. J. 773, 14 (2013).

Kokorev, V. et al. A census of photometrically selected little red dots at 4 < z < 9 in JWST blank fields. Astrophys. J. 968, 38 (2024).

Kulkarni, G., Worseck, G. & Hennawi, J. F. Evolution of the AGN UV luminosity function from redshift 7.5. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 488, 1035–1065 (2019).

Polletta, M. d. C. et al. Chandra and Spitzer unveil heavily obscured quasars in the Chandra/SWIRE survey. Astrophys. J. 642, 673–693 (2006).

Harikane, Y. et al. A JWST/NIRSpec first census of broad-line AGNs at z = 4–7: detection of 10 faint AGNs with M BH ~ 106−108 M ⊙ and their host galaxy properties. Astrophys. J. 959, 39 (2023).

Maiolino, R. et al. JADES: the diverse population of infant black holes at 4 < z < 11: merging, tiny, poor, but mighty. Astron. Astrophys. 691, A145 (2024).

Chen, C.-H., Ho, L. C., Li, R. & Zhuang, M.-Y. The host galaxy (if any) of the little red dots. Astrophys. J. 983, 60 (2025).

Greene, J. E., Strader, J. & Ho, L. C. Intermediate-mass black holes. Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 58, 257–312 (2020).

Fan, X., Bañados, E. & Simcoe, R. A. Quasars and the intergalactic medium at cosmic dawn. Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 61, 373–426 (2023).