Chris M. Harrison

At the center of nearly every large galaxy sits a supermassive black hole. It pulls in gas and dust, and a bright disk swirls around it. But the James Webb Telescope looked further out — into a region where the black hole's light is weaker, yet the dust still glows. Astronomers examined eight galaxies.

Red quasars are the brilliant cores of distant galaxies, wrapped in dust that makes their light appear reddish. Astronomers have noticed that such quasars more often than ordinary blue ones exhibit compact radio emission — radio waves coming from a region the size of a galaxy or smaller.