A Puzzling Celestial Object
Peering deeper into the universe's past than ever before, astronomers have identified an object that defies easy classification, potentially representing an entirely new class of celestial phenomena. The object, designated MOM-BH*-1, was discovered by a team led by Rohan Naidu of the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy and Jorryt Matthee of ISTA, as part of the ‘Mirage or Miracle’ project using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
Formed approximately 660 million years after the Big Bang, MOM-BH*-1 exhibits characteristics of both a star and a black hole, leading the team to propose the name “black hole star.” The object is one of several “little red dots” (LRDs) identified in JWST imagery, located in the constellation Cetus.
Rohan Naidu: From Engineering to the Cosmos
Naidu’s path to astronomical discovery was anything but linear. Born in Hyderabad, he left an engineering program at age 18, a decision his own MIT biography describes as a “Bollywood-esque plot twist.” He joined the founding class of Yale-NUS College in Singapore, where he discovered a passion for astronomy while studying blazars—extraordinarily bright objects powered by matter accreting onto supermassive black holes—with astronomer Charles Bailyn. He also worked with researchers associated with Yale’s Pieter van Dokkum group.
Naidu completed his PhD in Astronomy at Harvard in 2022 under Charlie Conroy, focusing on “Galactic Archaeology”—reconstructing the history of ancient galaxies by studying the stars in our own Milky Way. He then held prestigious fellowships, including the NASA Hubble Fellowship and the MIT Pappalardo Fellowship, before joining the University of Hawai'i’s Institute for Astronomy. An early user of the James Webb Space Telescope, Naidu was also involved in the 2022 discovery of GLASS-z13, a high-redshift galaxy. Outside the observatory, he is described as a quiz and trivia enthusiast, a published poet, and a Test cricket fan.
The ‘Black Hole Star’ Model
According to Open Magazine, MOM-BH-1* was identified in JWST observations at a redshift of about 7.76, showing an unusually strong Balmer break and broad hydrogen emission and absorption features. It was also the reddest source in a roughly 250-square-arcminute field.
Naidu and his collaborators propose that MOM-BH*-1 could be a “black hole star”—a massive black hole surrounded by a dense cocoon of gas. This model, outlined in a 2025 preprint, is presented as a proposed interpretation rather than a settled category, with other researchers continuing to explore competing explanations for the object's unusual properties. The discovery may offer clues to the growth of massive black holes in the early universe and shed light on the nature of the enigmatic “little red dots.”