The European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope has discovered 31 ancient quasars, including two that are the oldest ever observed. These objects, including EUCL J172902.75+641018.1, existed when the universe was just 670 million years old—roughly 5 percent of its current age—setting new records for cosmic distance and age.
For decades, astronomers have chased the first quasars to understand how the universe’s earliest supermassive black holes took shape. These objects are notoriously difficult to find; they are rare, and their primordial light is often too faint to distinguish from nearby stars. The European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope, launched in 2023, has fundamentally shifted this search by identifying a sample of 31 new quasars in the early universe.
EUCL J172902.75+641018.1 and the New Distance Records
The haul is headlined by two record-breakers that emerged during the universe’s first 670 million years. The most distant is EUCL J172902.75+641018.1, which sits at a redshift of approximately 7.77. This surpasses the previous record holder, quasar J0313-1806, which had a measured redshift of 7.642 in a 2021 study.
By capturing these and others, Euclid has more than doubled the known population of quasars from this specific, ancient epoch.
The “Black Hole Seed” Debate and Direct Collapse
These findings do more than just break records; they tighten the timeline for how supermassive black holes accumulate mass. Such stellar-mass seeds
would have to accrete matter at or above theoretical speed limits for hundreds of millions of years—a scenario most astrophysicists find implausible.
The alternative is direct collapse, where massive gas clouds bypass star formation entirely and collapse into black holes weighing tens of thousands of solar masses from the start. Because Euclid can now provide a statistical census of these objects, astronomers can compare these counts against future data from NASA’s Roman Space Telescope to determine which formation channel is more common.
Star Formation in the Host Galaxy of EUCL J125308.55+705432.3
Technical Edge: Why Euclid Succeeded Where Others Failed
Previous searches only found the tip of the iceberg
—the rarest, brightest outliers. Euclid’s design allows it to find the fainter population by combining wide-field coverage with depth.
| Quasar Designation | Redshift | Cosmic Age (Approx.) |
|---|---|---|
| EUCL J172902.75+641018.1 | 7.77 | 670 Million Years |
| EUCL J125308.55+705432.3 | 7.69 | 670 Million Years |
| J0313-1806 (Previous Record) | 7.642 | > 670 Million Years |
The discovery of these 31 objects, including 12 that date to the first 770 million years of the universe, provides a new window into the epoch of reionisation
—the transition from the cold, dark ages to a hot, ionised cosmos. While Euclid is already producing these results, its first full data release is not expected until 2027.
“By finding and studying them, we can better understand how these enormous systems formed and grew so quickly – one of the greatest mysteries in astrophysics.”
Daming Yang, Leiden University
These findings suggest that the mission will continue to uncover critical insights into the early evolution of the universe as more data becomes available over the coming years.
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