Overview

• An international team reports in Astronomy & Astrophysics that many JWST “little red dots” may be black hole star atmospheres rather than conventional galaxies.
• Nearly 60 hours of JWST spectroscopy collected in 2024 produced about 4,500 spectra, forming one of the telescope’s largest datasets for this question.
• An extreme case nicknamed “The Cliff” showed properties that standard galaxy models could not match, prompting new modeling.
• The spectra are dominated by very cold, dense hydrogen gas similar to low‑mass stellar atmospheres, not the hot emission typically linked to black holes.
• The authors describe the interpretation as preliminary and plan targeted follow‑ups to measure gas density and energetics to test the hypothesis.