Astronomers Find Oldest Quasar Pair in the Universe
Astronomers have discovered the oldest and closest pair of quasars ever seen, shining brightly from the early days of our universe.
On 10 November 2026, an international team of scientists announced the exciting discovery of the oldest quasar pair ever spotted in our cosmic history. Perched high atop the Maunakea volcano in Hawai’i, United States, astronomers used powerful instruments to peer billions of years into the past.
The twin objects, officially named J1602+4228AB, have received the special Hawaiian name Nāpōwawāʻenakaulua. This poetic name translates to “Two celestial bodies of fathomless powerful darkness in the brilliance of heat reincarnating energy into the Universe”.
What happened?
The remarkable study was led by Dr. Silvia Onorato, a researcher at NSF NOIRLab, and published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. To spot the pair, researchers used data from the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph, which is run by NASA, ESA, and CSA. Then, they used the sharp vision of the Gemini North telescope in Hawai’i to separate the single glow into two distinct objects.
Quasars are extraordinarily bright centres of distant galaxies, powered by hungry, supermassive black holes that pull in surrounding matter. In this rare pair, the black holes are mind-bogglingly heavy. One weighs about 1.5 billion times the mass of our Sun, while the other weighs around 400 million times the Sun’s mass!
Even though they are gigantic, they sit unusually close together. They are separated by a distance of only 18,100 light-years, which is roughly one-fifth the diameter of our own Milky Way galaxy.
Scientists are viewing this duo as they existed roughly 900 million years after the Big Bang, during an early era called the cosmic dawn or epoch of reionization. When their light set out on its journey across space, the universe was only about one-thirteenth of its current age of 13.8 billion years!
This discovery marks only the third known quasar pair from the cosmic dawn. It has created a grand scientific mystery because modern theories cannot explain how two monster black holes could grow so huge in such a short amount of time.
Why does it matter to you?
When you step outside at night in India and gaze up at the twinkling stars from your balcony or schoolyard, you might feel that science already knows everything about outer space. Yet, discoveries like this show that the universe is still full of fantastic puzzles waiting to be solved.
The name Nāpōwawāʻenakaulua was gifted through the A Hua He Inoa programme by the ʻImiloa Astronomy Center of Hawaiʻi and Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani at the University of Hawaiʻi. It reminds us how culture and modern science can work together hand in hand to describe our colourful cosmos.
If you love asking curious questions during your science classes, you could be part of the future team that figures out how these giant space beacons formed so early!
Words to know
- Quasar: A super bright and energetic centre of a distant galaxy powered by an active supermassive black hole.
- Supermassive black hole: An immense object in space with gravity so strong that not even light can escape, holding millions or billions of times the mass of our Sun.
- Cosmic dawn: The very early period in the universe, also known as the epoch of reionization, when the first stars and galaxies began to shine.
- Light-year: The distance that a beam of light travels through space in one entire year.
Did you know?
The universe is currently about 13.8 billion years old, but the light from this pair began travelling when the universe was only one-thirteenth of its present age!
Think about it
If you discovered a pair of bright objects deep in space, what special name from your own language or culture would you give them? How do you think black holes were able to grow so fast when the universe was still so young?
Quick quiz
How far apart are the two quasars in the Nāpōwawāʻenakaulua pair?
- 18,100 light-years
- 900 million light-years
- 13.8 billion light-years
See the answer
18,100 light-years
Sources
This story was prepared by the Kids Gazette news desk with the help of AI research and writing tools, using the sources listed above.
