Overview
- The University of Missouri team identified nine compact, point-like objects from JWST surveys dating to roughly 12–12.6 billion years ago, with four found in the CEERS field.
- Their spectra show narrow emission lines rather than the broad features typical of quasars, ruling out foreground stars and challenging standard quasar classifications.
- The observed signatures are consistent with compact star-forming systems, yet the sample size is small and current spectra are low resolution, so the classification remains tentative.
- The results were unveiled at the 247th American Astronomical Society meeting, with details available in an arXiv preprint titled A New Population of Point-like, Narrow-line Objects Revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope.
- The team aims to expand the search to hundreds of candidates and obtain higher-resolution spectroscopy to test how common these traits are and what they imply for early galaxy assembly.