@article{22751,
  abstract     = {The physical processes that led to the formation of billion-solar-mass black holes within the first 700 million years of cosmic time, a period known as cosmic dawn, remain a puzzle1. Several theoretical scenarios have been proposed to seed and rapidly grow black holes2,3,4, but direct observations of these mechanisms remain elusive. Here we present a source 660 million years after the Big Bang that exhibits singular properties: among the largest hydrogen Balmer breaks reported at any redshift, broad multi-peaked Hβ emission, and Balmer line absorption in several transitions. We model this source as an enshrouded black hole in which the Balmer break and absorption features are a result of extremely dense, turbulent gas forming a dust-free envelope around a supermassive black hole5,6. This source may provide evidence of an early black hole embedded in dense gas—a theoretical configuration proposed to rapidly grow black holes by super-Eddington accretion7,8. Radiation from the black hole seems to dominate almost all observed light, leaving limited room for contribution from its host galaxy. If the source merged with its brighter neighbour, it would resemble the recently discovered ‘little red dots’ with perplexing spectral energy distributions9,10,11. The redness of the black hole is due to gas, not dust12,13, and scattering, not kinematics, gives rise to the complex line shapes and luminosities—black hole masses of these sources may therefore be overestimated by orders of magnitude.},
  author       = {Naidu, Rohan P. and Matthee, Jorryt J and Katz, Harley and De Graaff, Anna and Oesch, Pascal A. and Smith, Aaron and Greene, Jenny E. and Brammer, Gabriel and Weibel, Andrea and Hviding, Raphael and Chisholm, John and Labbé, Ivo and Simcoe, Robert A. and Witten, Callum and Sun, Wendy Q. and Atek, Hakim and Baggen, Josephine F.W. and Belli, Sirio and Bezanson, Rachel and Boogaard, Leindert A. and Bose, Sownak and Bouwens, Rychard J. and Covelo-Paz, Alba and Dayal, Pratika and Fudamoto, Yoshinobu and Furtak, Lukas J. and Giovinazzo, Emma and Goulding, Andy and Gronke, Max and Heintz, Kasper E. and Hirschmann, Michaela and Illingworth, Garth and Inoue, Akio K. and Johnson, Benjamin D. and Leja, Joel and Leonova, Ecaterina and Mcconachie, Ian and Maseda, Michael V. and Natarajan, Priyamvada and Nelson, Erica and Setton, David J. and Shivaei, Irene and Sobral, David and Stefanon, Mauro and Tacchella, Sandro and Toft, Sune and Torralba Torregrosa, Alberto and Van Dokkum, Pieter and Van Der Wel, Arjen and Volonteri, Marta and Walter, Fabian and Wang, Bingjie and Watson, Darach and Whitaker, Katherine},
  issn         = {1476-4687},
  journal      = {Nature},
  number       = {8127},
  pages        = {329--333},
  publisher    = {Springer Nature},
  title        = {{A gas-enshrouded and gas-reddened black hole at cosmic dawn}},
  doi          = {10.1038/s41586-026-10846-4},
  volume       = {656},
  year         = {2026},
}