u/Space_Time_Notes

SPHEREx doesn't point at things. It just scans the entire sky continuously in 102 infrared channels. When it finished its first full pass this year, it posted everything to a public NASA archive anyone can query.

A team at Max Planck in Heidelberg loaded it up and searched for quasars — black holes at the centers of young galaxies, bright enough to outshine everything around them. At high redshifts the universe's expansion stretches their hydrogen emission into infrared, right where SPHEREx looks. You're searching for objects with the right shaped bump across 102 color channels. No telescope time needed for that part.

They flagged candidates, took 29 of them to Palomar and Keck in December. All 29 were real. 306 quasars total, 87 completely new, 19 from when the universe was under a billion years old.

The confirmation rate is what got me. Quasar candidate lists normally have a lot of junk — red dwarf stars and reddened galaxies that look similar in broadband. 29/29 is unusually clean.

Also worth knowing: this is from one scan. The mission runs two years, multiple passes. 306 is the opening number.

The paper title is "Three Hundred Quasars from the Couch," which is accurate.

Source: arXiv:2603.10135 — Davies, Bosman et al. (March 2026)

SPHEREx doesn't point at things. It just scans the entire sky continuously in 102 infrared channels. When it finished its first full pass this year, it posted everything to a public NASA archive anyone can query.

A team at Max Planck in Heidelberg loaded it up and searched for quasars — black holes at the centers of young galaxies, bright enough to outshine everything around them. At high redshifts the universe's expansion stretches their hydrogen emission into infrared, right where SPHEREx looks. You're searching for objects with the right shaped bump across 102 color channels. No telescope time needed for that part.

They flagged candidates, took 29 of them to Palomar and Keck in December. All 29 were real. 306 quasars total, 87 completely new, 19 from when the universe was under a billion years old.

The confirmation rate is what got me. Quasar candidate lists normally have a lot of junk — red dwarf stars and reddened galaxies that look similar in broadband. 29/29 is unusually clean.

Also worth knowing: this is from one scan. The mission runs two years, multiple passes. 306 is the opening number.

The paper title is "Three Hundred Quasars from the Couch," which is accurate.

Source: arXiv:2603.10135 — Davies, Bosman et al. (March 2026)

SPHEREx doesn't point at things. It just scans the entire sky continuously in 102 infrared channels. When it finished its first full pass this year, it posted everything to a public NASA archive anyone can query.

A team at Max Planck in Heidelberg loaded it up and searched for quasars — black holes at the centers of young galaxies, bright enough to outshine everything around them. At high redshifts the universe's expansion stretches their hydrogen emission into infrared, right where SPHEREx looks. You're searching for objects with the right shaped bump across 102 color channels. No telescope time needed for that part.

They flagged candidates, took 29 of them to Palomar and Keck in December. All 29 were real. 306 quasars total, 87 completely new, 19 from when the universe was under a billion years old.

The confirmation rate is what got me. Quasar candidate lists normally have a lot of junk — red dwarf stars and reddened galaxies that look similar in broadband. 29/29 is unusually clean.

Also worth knowing: this is from one scan. The mission runs two years, multiple passes. 306 is the opening number.

The paper title is "Three Hundred Quasars from the Couch," which is accurate.

Source: arXiv:2603.10135 — Davies, Bosman et al. (March 2026)

SPHEREx doesn't point at things. It just scans the entire sky continuously in 102 infrared channels. When it finished its first full pass this year, it posted everything to a public NASA archive anyone can query.

A team at Max Planck in Heidelberg loaded it up and searched for quasars — black holes at the centers of young galaxies, bright enough to outshine everything around them. At high redshifts the universe's expansion stretches their hydrogen emission into infrared, right where SPHEREx looks. You're searching for objects with the right shaped bump across 102 color channels. No telescope time needed for that part.

They flagged candidates, took 29 of them to Palomar and Keck in December. All 29 were real. 306 quasars total, 87 completely new, 19 from when the universe was under a billion years old.

The confirmation rate is what got me. Quasar candidate lists normally have a lot of junk — red dwarf stars and reddened galaxies that look similar in broadband. 29/29 is unusually clean.

Also worth knowing: this is from one scan. The mission runs two years, multiple passes. 306 is the opening number.

The paper title is "Three Hundred Quasars from the Couch," which is accurate.

Source: arXiv:2603.10135 — Davies, Bosman et al. (March 2026)

SPHEREx doesn't point at things. It just scans the entire sky continuously in 102 infrared channels. When it finished its first full pass this year, it posted everything to a public NASA archive anyone can query.

A team at Max Planck in Heidelberg loaded it up and searched for quasars — black holes at the centers of young galaxies, bright enough to outshine everything around them. At high redshifts the universe's expansion stretches their hydrogen emission into infrared, right where SPHEREx looks. You're searching for objects with the right shaped bump across 102 color channels. No telescope time needed for that part.

They flagged candidates, took 29 of them to Palomar and Keck in December. All 29 were real. 306 quasars total, 87 completely new, 19 from when the universe was under a billion years old.

The confirmation rate is what got me. Quasar candidate lists normally have a lot of junk — red dwarf stars and reddened galaxies that look similar in broadband. 29/29 is unusually clean.

Also worth knowing: this is from one scan. The mission runs two years, multiple passes. 306 is the opening number.

The paper title is "Three Hundred Quasars from the Couch," which is accurate.

Source: arXiv:2603.10135 — Davies, Bosman et al. (March 2026)

SPHEREx doesn't point at things. It just scans the entire sky continuously in 102 infrared channels. When it finished its first full pass this year, it posted everything to a public NASA archive anyone can query.

A team at Max Planck in Heidelberg loaded it up and searched for quasars — black holes at the centers of young galaxies, bright enough to outshine everything around them. At high redshifts the universe's expansion stretches their hydrogen emission into infrared, right where SPHEREx looks. You're searching for objects with the right shaped bump across 102 color channels. No telescope time needed for that part.

They flagged candidates, took 29 of them to Palomar and Keck in December. All 29 were real. 306 quasars total, 87 completely new, 19 from when the universe was under a billion years old.

The confirmation rate is what got me. Quasar candidate lists normally have a lot of junk — red dwarf stars and reddened galaxies that look similar in broadband. 29/29 is unusually clean.

Also worth knowing: this is from one scan. The mission runs two years, multiple passes. 306 is the opening number.

The paper title is "Three Hundred Quasars from the Couch," which is accurate.

Source: arXiv:2603.10135 — Davies, Bosman et al. (March 2026)

SPHEREx doesn't point at things. It just scans the entire sky continuously in 102 infrared channels. When it finished its first full pass this year, it posted everything to a public NASA archive anyone can query.

A team at Max Planck in Heidelberg loaded it up and searched for quasars — black holes at the centers of young galaxies, bright enough to outshine everything around them. At high redshifts the universe's expansion stretches their hydrogen emission into infrared, right where SPHEREx looks. You're searching for objects with the right shaped bump across 102 color channels. No telescope time needed for that part.

They flagged candidates, took 29 of them to Palomar and Keck in December. All 29 were real. 306 quasars total, 87 completely new, 19 from when the universe was under a billion years old.

The confirmation rate is what got me. Quasar candidate lists normally have a lot of junk — red dwarf stars and reddened galaxies that look similar in broadband. 29/29 is unusually clean.

Also worth knowing: this is from one scan. The mission runs two years, multiple passes. 306 is the opening number.

The paper title is "Three Hundred Quasars from the Couch," which is accurate.

Source: arXiv:2603.10135 — Davies, Bosman et al. (March 2026)