Astronomers have discovered what could be an entirely new type of astrophysical object: a “black hole star” that combines a massive black hole with an enormous envelope of gas similar to a star. The object, named MoM-BH*-1, was spotted by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in the very early universe, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

The object appears as an extremely bright red dot, roughly the size of our Solar System. Yet its energy output is estimated to be 100 billion times greater than that of any ordinary star, making conventional nuclear fusion impossible as its power source. Instead, the researchers believe the object is powered by a central black hole surrounded by an enormous, dense cloud of hydrogen gas.

“We think there is a central black hole that is 100,000 times as massive as the sun,” said lead author Rohan Naidu, a NASA Hubble Fellow and Pappalardo Fellow at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. The black hole would be surrounded by an extended envelope of gas roughly the size of the Solar System, giving the object its star-like appearance.