ESA reports that the Euclid space telescope has identified 31 quasars in the early Universe, including two with redshifts of 7.77 and 7.69. The agency describes them as the earliest quasars yet observed: both were seen as they existed about 670 million years after the beginning of the Universe, and are just over 13 billion light-years away according to ESA.
The discovery paper, titled Euclid: Discovery of 31 new quasars at 6.6<z<7.8, was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics on 6 July 2026, according to the agency.
Contents
- What Euclid found
- Why these redshifts matter
- What the discovery can reveal
- Important limits of the result
What Euclid found
The newly reported objects were identified in data from Euclid's Wide Survey. Of the 31 quasars, 12 have redshifts of 7 or above. ESA associates that redshift range with the first 770 million years of cosmic history.
The two highest-redshift objects are named EUCL J172902.75+641018.1 and EUCL J125308.55+705432.3. Their reported redshifts are 7.77 and 7.69, respectively. The previous record-holder, discovered in 2021, had a redshift of 7.64.
A quasar is an extremely luminous active galactic nucleus, a phase in which material accreting onto a supermassive black hole releases enormous amounts of energy.
ESA says these two quasars shone with the light of approximately a trillion Suns when the Universe was 670 million years old. This describes the light output attributed to the objects at that early epoch; it does not mean that the black holes themselves have been directly observed forming.
The wider Euclid survey is intended to cover more than one-third of the sky when complete. Its combination of broad sky coverage, depth, sharp imaging and space-based infrared vision is being used to search for rare, distant objects, according to ESA.
Why these redshifts matter
Cosmological redshift measures how much light has been stretched as the Universe expands. In astronomy, a higher redshift generally indicates that light has travelled from a greater distance and that the object is being observed at an earlier stage of cosmic history.
The redshift values reported for the two Euclid objects therefore place their emitted light extremely early in the Universe's history. ESA's age and distance descriptions are based on the interpretation of those observations within cosmological models.
Quasars are powered by material accreting onto supermassive black holes, and these objects are being observed only hundreds of millions of years after the beginning of the Universe. Finding them provides evidence that powerful black-hole activity was already present during this period.
The early Universe also included the epoch of reionisation, a transition during which the Universe changed from being largely neutral to ionised. Early quasars are among the objects that can help astronomers study the galaxies, black holes and energetic processes present during that broader period.
What the discovery can reveal
The 31-object sample gives astronomers more examples with which to investigate how the first supermassive black holes and their host galaxies grew. A larger population can help researchers compare the brightness, redshift distribution and environments of early quasars rather than relying on only a small number of exceptional objects.
The second most ancient quasar in the report has already received follow-up observations. ESA says those observations found it embedded in a dusty, gas-filled galaxy with intense star formation. That combination links the quasar's central black-hole activity with conditions in its host galaxy, although the supplied announcement does not establish how the two processes are causally related.
ESA characterises the discovery as more than doubling the number of known quasars at this age or redshift range. The agency also describes the two objects as the earliest quasars yet observed. These are attributed claims based on the reported comparison with earlier observations; the discovery does not by itself determine how the black holes formed or grew so early.
Important limits of the result
The evidence available for this report comes from ESA's mission announcement rather than the full text of the Astronomy & Astrophysics paper. The announcement does not provide the detailed selection method, the spectroscopic confirmation procedure, the survey area analysed, detection completeness or uncertainty estimates for the reported redshifts.
It also does not establish whether all 31 objects have the same level of follow-up confirmation. Detailed host-galaxy properties are not provided for the full sample or most individual objects, although ESA reports that follow-up observations found the second most ancient quasar in a dusty, gas-filled galaxy with intense star formation. Individual luminosity uncertainties, black-hole masses and statistical significance are not provided in the supplied material.
The quoted cosmic ages and distances are reported by ESA, but the announcement does not explain the cosmological parameters or detailed calculations used to derive them. Nor does the result directly observe the formation of the black holes. It supplies observations that constrain theories of early black-hole and galaxy growth, while how such black holes formed and grew so early remains an open scientific question.