The James Webb Space Telescope has found something that should not exist: an object the size of the solar system, as bright as 100 billion stars, powered by nothing resembling nuclear fusion. It is called MoM-BH*-1, and it represents the strongest observational evidence ever gathered for an entirely new class of objects, dubbed “black hole stars” by astronomers. The findings were published on August 12, 2026, in the journal Nature by a team led by Rohan Naidu of the MIT Kavli Institute.
MoM-BH*-1 lies in the constellation Cetus and is observed as it appeared just 660 million years after the Big Bang. This is no ordinary star with a black hole lurking inside. It is something fundamentally different: a rapidly accreting black hole, estimated at around 100,000 solar masses, wrapped in an extraordinarily dense cocoon of hydrogen gas. That cocoon extends across distances comparable to our own solar system. The black hole at its center heats the surrounding gas with its energy output, effectively taking over the role that nuclear fusion plays in the cores of ordinary stars. The visual result is a compact, intensely red and brilliantly bright point of light.
The object was identified during the Mirage or Miracle (MoM) survey, a JWST program designed to target so-called “risky” sources — candidates that could be either very distant galaxies or foreground contaminants. MoM-BH*-1 stood out as the brightest and reddest point in the entire field. Spectroscopic measurements revealed a luminosity roughly 100 billion times greater than that of any known star — far beyond what nuclear fusion could account for. Only an actively accreting black hole, consuming infalling matter at a furious rate, can generate that level of energy. Simulations confirmed that a 100,000-solar-mass black hole embedded in a dense hydrogen envelope faithfully reproduces the JWST observations.
The implications reach well beyond the classification of a single object. JWST has so far detected 341 so-called “little red dots” in the ancient universe: compact, reddish sources that did not fit neatly into standard categories of galaxies or quasars. The discovery of MoM-BH*-1 suggests that many of these dots could be black hole stars embedded within brighter host galaxies. When the spectra of the two objects — MoM-BH*-1 and the neighboring galaxy it may merge with in roughly 100 million years — are combined, the result closely resembles the characteristic spectra of the little red dots. This link resolves much of the uncertainty that has built up around these mysterious sources in recent years.
The broader question at stake concerns the formation of supermassive black holes. How did they manage to accumulate billions of solar masses in such a short cosmic timeframe? A phase of rapid accretion, shielded by dense gas that traps outgoing radiation and prevents radiation pressure from throttling the inflow of matter, could be the answer. The black hole star would represent an intermediate stage — an intense growth phase before the black hole ultimately breaks free and emerges as a fully fledged quasar. If future observations of similar objects confirm this picture, it will rewrite part of the story of the early universe.
