Powerful black holes might grow up in bustling galactic neighborhoods

Dr. Jaclyn Champagne, our JASPER post-doc researcher in the UA Astronomy Department, is hard at work using James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data to map out rapidly forming galaxy neighborhoods—protoclusters—and to understand if these cosmic cities are the birthplace of extraordinarily luminous quasars. The wide-field slitless spectrograph aboard JWST has revolutionized the search for these galactic neighborhoods in the early universe, where astronomers are observing “colliding galaxies, growing black holes and great swarms of gas that will eventually become the next generation of stars.” Learn about Jackie’s work in her latest article for The Conversation, here.