James Webb Space Telescope sees an ancient black hole dance with colliding galaxies

A swirling orange and red disc with a black sphere at its center with a widing white line emerging from it. A black box with pixelated red, green and white shapes within it.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have observed the dramatic "dance" between a supermassive black hole and two satellite galaxies. The observations could help scientists better understand how galaxies and supermassive black holes grew in the early universe.

This particular supermassive black hole is feeding on surrounding matter and powering a bright quasar that is so distant that JWST sees it as it was less than a billion years after the Big Bang. The quasar, designated PJ308-21, is localized to an active galactic nucleus (AGN) in a galaxy that is in the process of merging with two massive satellite galaxies.