The James Webb Space Telescope spotted a "red dot" in the early Universe — just 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang — which turned out to be a supermassive black hole. It is shrouded in dense cosmic dust, like a frosted lampshade dimming the light. The dust absorbs radiation, and without it the core would shine several times brighter.

This was measured using spectroscopy — splitting light into a rainbow. For the first time at such a distance, astronomers saw familiar oxygen and silicon lines in the colorful bands of the spectrum. By comparing their brightness, they determined how much the dust dims the glow. But the real surprise is elsewhere. It turns out the black hole doesn't just glow from heat: it fluoresces — re-emitting ultraviolet into visible light, like security marks on banknotes. This unexpected property helps us understand how the first black holes managed to gain monstrous mass in such a short time.