Is our first "galaxy-quasar hybrid" also a Little Red Dot?

"To discover what's out there in the Universe, you simply have to look. But only by looking in the right ways can you uncover all that's present. You must look: deeply, with long-exposures, revealing faint and distant targets, wide, at large areas, to capture rare objects, and across multiple wavelengths, unveiling the properties of entities. At the greatest distances, objects fall into two main categories."

"Most are galaxies, with light is dominated by their constituent stars. The remainder are quasars, dominated by actively feeding supermassive black holes. Prior to JWST, this described nearly all known luminous sources. Only one remarkable ultra-distant object, GNz7q, didn't fit either profile. This bright, dust-rich, star-forming galaxy was severely reddened. It also lacked characteristic disk-emission light. The leading interpretation was a dust-obscured galaxy with a quasar-containing core."

"Now, however, the JWST era has revealed over 300 "Little Red Dot" galaxies. We can look at their emitted light as a function of wavelength. Most display ultraviolet light, indicating stars, plus optical/infrared light, indicating active black holes. Mostly Mute Monday tells an astronomical story in images, visuals, and no more than 200 words. Others appear more point-like, with little dust: suggesting an ongoing burst of star-formation. We now know that GNz7q was the first Little Red Dot ever found: a true galaxy-quasar hybrid!"

Deep, wide, multiwavelength observations enable detection of faint, rare, and wavelength-dependent phenomena in the distant Universe. At the greatest distances most luminous sources fall into two categories: galaxies dominated by starlight and quasars dominated by accreting supermassive black holes. Prior to JWST one ultra-distant outlier, GNz7q, lacked a clear classification. JWST has now uncovered over 300 Little Red Dot objects whose spectra show ultraviolet emission from stars alongside optical/infrared signatures of active black holes. Some Little Red Dots are dust-rich and reddened while others are compact and dust-poor, indicating ongoing starbursts, and GNz7q represents a galaxy–quasar hybrid.

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