Space.com video: James Webb space telescope view of the Pillars of Creation

Astronomers have discovered a cluster of galaxies merging around a rare red quasar, a "monster" supermassive black hole that is greedily feeding on gas and other material.

An international team of scientists made the surprising discovery as they were using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to stare billions of years back in time. The finding represents an opportunity to observe how early galaxies merged forming the universe as we see it today. The blindingly bright quasar and extremely red quasar, known as SDSS J165202.64+172852.3, is about 11.5 billion years old and one of the most powerful ever seen from a such tremendous distance away, according to the researchers, who describe it as a black hole in formation.

"We think something dramatic is about to happen in these systems," Andrey Vayner, research co-author and an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, said in a statement. "The galaxy is at this perfect moment in its lifetime, about to transform and look entirely different in a few billion years."

James Webb Space Telescope spies galaxies merging around 'monster' black hole