Unearthing galaxies in the archives

Comparing old Hubble data to today is revealing distant active galaxies

- Prof Chris Lintott

Over the last year or so, images from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed a population of 'little red dots' faint objects that may well be the cores of galaxies, shining brightly thanks to what seem to be actively growing black holes at their centres. 

Understanding this early population is an important and urgent task for cosmologists, but there's a problem. When we look at sources this far away, we see only the most massive and brightest systems, while testing our theories means we want to see what's going on with normal, Milky Way-sized galaxies.