The Supermassive Black Hole at CAPERS-LRD-z9

​CAPERS-LRD-z9 is a small, distant galaxy that hosts the most distant confirmed supermassive black hole yet discovered, dating from just 500 million years after the Big Bang or about 13.3 billion years ago.
 
CAPERS-LRD-z9 was discovered through a combination of deep-space surveys and advanced spectroscopy with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), marking it as the most distant confirmed supermassive black hole. The object was first identified as a candidate “Little Red Dot” (LRD), a small, bright, red galaxies, using JWST’s NIRCam imaging provided by the PRIMER survey in the COSMOS field. The definitive evidence came from NIRSpec/PRISM spectra, which revealed a very broad Hβ emission line (from hydrogen gas moving at thousands of km/s) and narrow O III lines (a classic hallmarks of a broad-line active galactic nucleus), indicating an accreting supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center. The redshift was precisely measured to be z = 9.288, when the universe was only about 3% its current age. The estimated black hole mass is about 38 million solar masses but could plausibly range from 4.5 – 316 million solar masses, the upper limit of the host galaxy’s stellar mass is about 1 billion solar masses, making the black hole-to-galaxy mass ratio extremely high for this cosmic era. Its discovery sets a record as the farthest and earliest confirmed active galactic nucleus, with spectroscopically confirmed broad emission lines seen to date, offering unprecedented insight into the early evolution of galaxies and black holes.
 
CAPERS-LRD-z9 is a landmark find in extragalactic astronomy, offering new insights into the formation and rapid growth of black holes in the early universe. These observations press the limits of current telescope technology and challenge existing models on how black holes could grow so massive, so quickly, in the infancy of the universe.
 
References
Hensley, K. (2025, August 6). Distant Little Red Dot Hosts a Huge and Growing Black Hole. AAS NOVA.
 
Ralls, E. (2025). Earliest Confirmed Black Hole Ever Discovered is a True Monster From the Dawn of Time. Earth.Com.