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ESA’s Euclid Finds 31 Early Quasars, Doubling Count

7/10/2026

26 3 Full Breakdown

Summary

Story summary

ESA announced on July 6 2026 that Euclid discovered 31 quasars from the universe’s first 770 million years.
EUCL J172902.75+641018.1 (z 7.77) and EUCL J125308.55+705432.3 (z 7.69) lie about 13 billion light-years away.
Twelve quasars have redshifts >=7, doubling the known count, while Keck Observatory confirmed 21 of the 31 candidates.
JWST will weigh their black holes while lead author Daming Yang said the sample enables population-level study.

History

Historical Context

In 1963 Maarten Schmidt measured a redshift of 0.158 for 3C 273, proving quasars were distant, luminous galaxies and undermining steady-state cosmology. Decades of radio and optical surveys built on that breakthrough have now identified dozens of extreme-redshift quasars such as Poniua‘ena at z = 7.52, showing supermassive black holes formed within the first 800 million years.

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Story summary

ESA announced on July 6 2026 that Euclid discovered 31 quasars from the universe’s first 770 million years.
EUCL J172902.75+641018.1 (z 7.77) and EUCL J125308.55+705432.3 (z 7.69) lie about 13 billion light-years away.
Twelve quasars have redshifts >=7, doubling the known count, while Keck Observatory confirmed 21 of the 31 candidates.
JWST will weigh their black holes while lead author Daming Yang said the sample enables population-level study.

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