Little red dots

A few years ago, astronomers noticed small, extremely red, compact objects in images from the James Webb Space Telescope that could not be classified into any known category. They quickly aroused great curiosity among researchers and earned the nickname "little red dots." This episode's guest, Roberta Tripodi from the Rome Astronomical Observatory, is one of the researchers delving into this mystery and recently published the latest discoveries about little red dots as part of the CANUCS international collaboration.

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Cover image: Little red dots in a JWST image. Image credit: UNCOVER.

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Notes |

• Roberta Tripodi
• MAST - open-access JWST data archive
• Press release on little red dots (FMF UL and NASA)
• Scientific article Tripodi et al. 2025, “Extreme properties of a compact and massive accreting black hole host in the first 500 Myr”

News|

• News about comet 3I/ATLAS (https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/news/comet-3i-atlas-nasa-maven-hydrogen, https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/news/3i-atlas-esa-mars-images-october-2025)
• 1st GoChile Winter School for Teachers
• International Lunar Parallax Project

Observations |

• (book) G. Cannat,⁠⁠⁠ “Glej jih, zvezde! Najlepši prizori na nebu v letu 2025”⁠⁠⁠
• ISS passes: ⁠on the website Vesolje.net⁠⁠⁠, on the website Heavens-Above⁠⁠⁠
• Space weather on Space Weather.com
• Aurora Borealis (Slovenian page): https://severnisij.si/
• Phone applications: Stellarium, SkySafari, SkyPortal, Aurora (for Aurora Borealis)
• Desktop planetarium: Stellarium

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Logo: (modified) Moon image, credit: NASA's⁠ Scientific Visualization Studio⁠

Audio intermezzo: ⁠NASA/Hubble/SYSTEM Sounds (Matt Russo, Andrew Santaguida)⁠

Music: Peli (⁠Opravičujemo se za vse nevšečnosti⁠)

Portal v vesolje podcast: Spotify, author: Jure Japelj

Podcast Temna stran Lune is part of the Zavoda Cosmolab activity network: https://www.cosmolab.si