Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2026

38 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2026 ASTRO PUBLISHING Webb explores family tree of newly discovered distant objects by NASA/ESA/CSA Laura Betz Abigail Major Hannah Braun like a unique galaxy population, these dots are affected by observa- tional bias — some features just don’t appear at higher redshifts with current technology. Their conclusions are based on their analysis of lower-redshift spiral galaxy WISEA J123635.56+621424.2, nicknamed the “Saguaro” for its prominent arms, like the cactus na- tive to the Sonoran Desert in the Southwestern United States. A par- ticularly intriguing feature of this redshift 2 galaxy, which corresponds to approximately 3.3 billion years after the big bang, is its little red redshifts. (The higher the redshift, the greater the distance the light has traveled across the universe.) This perplexing shift in number raises the question: What happens to little red dots as the universe matures? A team of researchers led by Pier- luigi Rinaldi of the University of Ari- zona’s Steward Observatory, now at the Space Telescope Science Insti- tute (STScI) in Baltimore, has built upon their previous research in a new study published in The Astro- physical Journal and proposed one pathway LRDs can follow as the uni- verse ages: Though they may look S ince their discovery by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in 2022, little red dots (LRDs) have been the subject of great interest to astronomers. Understanding the na- ture of these extremely distant, com- pact red sources has been a puzzling scientific endeavor. One popular theory is that little red dots are supermassive black holes known as active galactic nuclei, al- though they display characteristics unlike nearby active galactic nuclei. While they appear abundant at high redshift early in the universe, they rapidly decrease in number at lower