Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2026

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2026 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILX_6owtwgE T his collage shows 15 of the 31 newly discovered quasars by the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope, with their names and redshift (z). Two of these giant, dazzling, black hole-powered galaxy cores are older than any we’ve seen before. These are visible on the first row, the first and second from the left. The farthest quasar is named EUCL J172902.75+641018.1 (redshift of 7.77), and the second-farthest is named EUCL J125308.55+705432.3 (redshift of 7.69). These cosmic elders shone with the light of a trillion Suns back when the Universe was 670 million years old – just 5% of its current age. [ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by the Euclid Science Ground Segment and Antoine Basset (CNES)] I n March 2026 the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope dis- covered 31 of the most ancient quasars ever found, more than doubling the number of quasars we know of that are so old. This video summa- rizes the discovery. [A CNES production (Antoine Basset); Source imagery: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO. Background music licensed via Pixabay] “Euclid is a true game-changer,” adds Daming. “Before, we could on- ly find a handful of the very bright- est ancient quasars, but Euclid lets us search far more efficiently across huge areas of sky to capture much fainter light. It’s a unique tool for quasar hunting.” The discovery adds 12 new quasars at a ‘redshift’ – a measure of distance and motion re- lated to how light moves through our expanding cosmos – of 7 or above, corresponding to the first 770 million years of the Universe. The two most ancient of the batch, EUCL J172902.75+641018.1 and EUCL J125308.55+705432.3, have redshifts of 7.77 and 7.69, respec-