Kasper E. Heintz

A cosmic neon sign lit up in an incredibly distant galaxy: almost all its light comes from hot gas, and the stars are lost in this glow. The James Webb telescope recorded that the gas, a mix of hydrogen and helium, is so heated that it glows on its own.

Out in the distant cosmos, there are galaxies that astronomers have nicknamed 'little red dots': in images they appear as tiny reddish specks, even though they are mind-bogglingly far away. Their light looks red not because they are cold, but because the expanding universe stretches light waves.

At the heart of massive galaxies, monstrous gravitational 'cocoons' brew — black holes with billions of solar masses, shrouded in a dense veil of gas and dust. But any metamorphosis requires breaking the shell.