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JWST discovers mysterious object with one single emission line in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field within the constellation of Fornax — where there doesn't seem to be anything at all

TL;DR (courtesy of aggregate article (https://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-have-detected-a-mysterious-signal-coming-from-empty-space-nobody-knows-what-it-is)): In a tiny corner of the tiny field, JWST detected a strange signal – not once, but twice, in observations nearly three months apart. There's just one problem. In every other prior observation from both JWST and Hubble, there's absolutely nothing there. That doesn't mean that there is nothing there – there may be something otherwise too dim to detect that briefly unleashed a powerful flare – but it does make that signal a mystery that, currently, has no satisfying explanation.

Original study abstract:

"We report the detection of a previously unknown object with a single emission line within the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, using a new JWST NIRSpec technique called Multiobject Coronagraphy for Slitless Spectroscopy (MOCSS) with the G140M/F100LP observing mode. The MOCSS technique involves opening almost all the shutters on the NIRSpec microshutter array, while simultaneously closing the shutters that lie on top of known low-redshift objects, facilitating a wide-field slitless spectroscopic search without contamination from bright objects. This observational technique has enabled the detection of a strong emission line in four different dither positions and in two position angles, and thus cannot be artificial. This line is detected at 1.60 μm with a line flux of [2.5 ± 0.3] × 10−18 erg s−1cm−2 and an FWHM of 13.2 ± 2.0 Å, and does not correspond to any known source with some of the deepest Hubble Space Telescope and JWST imaging in existence. Based upon the absence of imaging detection, we place a lower limit on the observed frame equivalent width (EW) of 7620 Å on this object, which strongly limits the number of possible lines that this line can be. Given the wavelength, an EW limit that is near the ceiling of expectation, and the lack of other lines in the bandpass, this line cannot be easily explained by [O ii] at z = 3.29, [O iii] at z = 2.20, Hα at z = 1.44, and Lyα at z = 12.16. We discuss possible active galactic nucleus and transient phenomena that could explain the finding."

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae9a94

— u/ChiefLeef22