Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2026 ARABIC VERSION

Q Euclid discovers the most ancient quasar in the Universe uasars represent a brief phase in a galaxy’s life dur- ingwhichlargeamountsof material spiral into the central su- permassive black hole, releasing enormousamountsofenergy.In this phase, the galaxy’s nucleus shines more brightly than anything else in the Universe, often outshin-ing the rest of its host galaxy by hundreds to thousands of times. We’ve been hunting for the Uni- verse’sveryfirstquasarsfordecades. These objects reveal what was hap- pening during the earliest days ofthe cosmos, including how the first supermassive black holes and galax- ies took shape. However, quasars from this time are difficult to find. They’rerare,asfewgalaxieshadyet had time to grow big enough, and their primordial light is both faint and easy to confuse with that from stars lying closer to us. Euclid,launchedin2023,isdigging deeper into this mystifying part of ancientcosmichistory–withexcit- ing results. The telescope has now discoveredanunprecedentednum- ber of 31 new quasars in the early Universe, pushing back to a time when the cosmos was just 5% of its current age. “These early quasars date back to theUniverse’sinfancy,” saysDaming Yang of Leiden University in the Netherlands,leadauthoroftheEu- cliddiscoverypaper. “Byfindingand studying them, we can better un- derstand how these enormous sys- tems formed and grew so quickly – oneofthegreatestmysteriesinas- trophysics.” The earliest quasars we knew of until now were just the tip of the iceberg:therareandbrightoutliers that have been easiest to spot. We simply hadn’t found enough quasars from the Universe’s early days to study them properly as a group.Euclid’snewfindingchanges all that, capturing not just the bright outliers but most of the an- cient quasar population. BER2026 إﻗﻠ ﺪس ﻳﺮﺻﺪ أﻗﺪم اﻟ ﻮازارات اﻟﻤﻌﺮوﻓﺔ ﻓﻲاﻟ ﻮن : ﻘﻠﻢ و ﺎﻟﺔ اﻟﻔﻀﺎء اﻷوروﺑ ﺔ ﻣﺠﻠﺔ FreeAstronomy ﺎﻟﻌﺮ ﺔ 4 - ﺳﺒﺘﻤﺒﺮ ﺃﻛﺘﻮﺑﺮ 2 0 2 6 ﺪ