Kavli Affiliate: Linhua Jiang
| Summary:
"Little red dots" (LRDs) represent a new population of astronomical objects uncovered by JWST whose nature remains debated. Although many LRDs are suspected as active galactic nuclei (AGN), they show little variability on days-years timescales. We report the discovery of two gravitationally lensed LRDs at redshift $sim$4.3 behind the cluster RXCJ2211-0350, one of which (RX1) is quadruply imaged with time delays spanning $sim$130 years. RX1 exhibits intrinsic color and brightness variations of up to 0.7 magnitude among its images. These changes are consistent with blackbody-temperature variations of a photosphere, indicating long-term variability analogous to Cepheid-like pulsations but in a far more extended ($R sim 2000$ AU) and massive ($M gtrsim 10^6 , M_odot$) systems. These results suggest LRDs as a distinct class of AGN with stellar-like envelopes.
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