3212: Little Red Dots

Little Red Dots

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Title text: After a lot of analysis, I've determined that they're actually big red dots; they're just very far away.

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Explanation

This is one of 69 incomplete explanations: This page was created by a LITTLE RED BOT. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

The little red dots that the comic refers to are something of an astronomical mystery, discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (a.k.a. "JWST"). They may be powered by very, very old black holes from 400-700 million years after the Big Bang, with the light from when they were young. The comic purports to give the responses of several different experts in unrelated fields when asked to identify them:

• According to the entomologists (scientists who study insects and related arthropods), they are clover mites (Bryobia praetiosa) — very small red arachnids.
• According to the computer scientists, they are stuck pixels — pixels that do not work properly, and are stuck to one single color (red in this case). This is a plausible concern, but presumably should already be handled through calibration processes.
• According to the dermatologists (doctors who specialize in skin disorders), they are cherry angiomas — harmless, non-cancerous skin growths made of clusters of dilated capillaries, appearing as bright red, smooth, or slightly raised spots.
• According to the graphic designers, they are colors of type Jasper (● #d73b3e) or Vermillion (● #e34234, sometimes called Cinnabar).

Quite obviously, all of these, if not completely incorrect, are fully unrelated to astronomy.

Part of the punchline is the shift in focus: instead of trying to identify the object, the designer is nitpicking the description of "red dot." Additionally, the graphic designer is also requesting Cueball's color settings, implying they believe the reason Cueball calls them "red" is due to poor display settings, and not due to using the common term for the color. There is a certain amount of insight here, as the JWST only observes orange to far-infrared light; this is to enable it to see very distant objects, whose blue and ultraviolet emissions have been redshifted into longer wavelengths. Converting observed wavelengths into rest-frame wavelengths is a process subject to error, and then falsely-coloring the object so that it may be visualized by human eyes is another such.

In the title text, Randall claims to have analyzed the "little red dots" and determined that they are actually very large but distant objects. This is, however, an obvious deduction, since the JWST telescope is only ever used to look at very distant objects in space^{[citation needed]}, and these 'dots' must therefore be very large just to be visible at all (due to the phenomenon of relative perceived size, where larger objects that are further away appear to be the same size as smaller ones that are closer to the viewer). The punchline here is that someone who has performed a lot of analysis would be expected to have a result that was not already obvious, but anyone looking at a telescope image of deep space would already be assuming that it depicts large objects very far away, not small objects close to the telescope. The theme of astronomers unsure of the size of objects spotted in a telescope was previously mentioned in 2359: Evidence of Alien Life.

The (possible) issue of a 'stuck pixel', except of a different hue, was previously visited in 1246: Pale Blue Dot.

Transcript

[Caption above all the panels:]

Astronomers asking researchers from different departments to help them identify the "little red dots" in JWST images:

[In each panel, Cueball stands at the left of an easel. The easel is shown each time as having a black image with three red dots on it. At the right of the easel in each panel is a different character looking at the image on the easel and commenting on it. At the top of each panel is a caption indicating the type of researcher commenting on the image.]

Caption: Entomologists

Megan: Clover mites.

Caption: Computer scientists

Knit Cap: Stuck pixels.

Caption: Dermatologists

Ponytail: Cherry angiomas.

Caption: Graphic designers

Hairy: No, those are vermillion, or maybe jasper.

Hairy: Can I see your color settings?

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Discussion

Everyone why is absolutely nothing here yet Ehogin (talk) 03:08, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Because this comic came out like 2 hours ago. Xkdvd (talk) 04:17, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Yeah by the amount of people who read xkcd you would think at least 100 people saw this and did not do anything for two hours Ehogin (talk) 04:45, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Its not a question of how many people read xkcd, its how many people use explain xkcd, and edit, and know what to put here. EDIT: forgot my signature. oops. Xkdvd (talk) 04:51, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Bear in mind that the Rightpondians amongst this site's readership may have been asleep (...or preparing to sleep ...or too busy geeking out on some late-night project to either sleep or visit here), and only for Leftpondians will it have been late-afternoon/early-evening and perhaps a more handy moment to both read here/xkcd.com and then to come up with a clever reply.

Assuming they weren't busy doing homework, or going to see a movie, or actively on a date/date-night with their spouse, or getting ready to do something like an aformentioned geeky all-nighter (probably involving cartloads of GIS data and a partially written Perl script that needs bashing into shape), or just fancied watching the TV, or had just given up on xkcd for the day (having hoped it had come out an hour or two earlier), or had even forgotten it was a Wednesday, or ...just like to visit here when 'the dust has settled' so that they only have to nitpick prior editors and not have to Edit Conflict the "created by a FIRST POST!" edits... ;)

And then there's those even more adrift (across the Pacific, and all points between there and Europe) where other matters (breakfast... or oversleeping due to last night's geek-in) might take automatic precedence.

Naturally, there's all kinds of people on all kinds of offsets of availability against all kinds of local timezones, but I (for one) actually had a relatively early night, due to needing to be up earlier than usual this morning. I doubt that is everyone else's reason (TZ-adjusted, etc), but there's better and worse times when it comes to chancing across a reason to fill in the original BOT-posted 'blank' Explanation, and this time it seemed to be a less servicable than it might have been. ;) 82.132.236.204 18:52, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

OK, we want something here? I get Clover Mites a lot. On the patio table, on the deck chairs. On the car, but I fooled them this time: I got a cherry-red car. Maybe they got into the JWST? --PRR (talk) 05:32, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Current title text explanation seems like a bit of a stretch to me; see 2359 for a more refined take on explaining a very a similar joke. 204.77.3.72 08:32, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Sure, whatever you say Father Dougal. --2A10:D586:3E93:0:21B8:BB66:6F56:9A06 08:53, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Ha, you beat me to it. The title text, to me, seems an obvious allusion to Father Ted's famous "THESE cows are small, but THOSE cows are far away..." scene. But probably isn't, in this case. 136.226.55.1 17:21, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

TV criminologists: a pattern centered on the killer's home. 194.75.188.171 11:15, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

I don't know if it is "nitpicking" per se (though admittedly that is a clever pun, even though nits are generally brown and are rarely red). It could be that the graphic designer is genuinely interested in helping identify the color. Cwallenpoole (talk) 12:41, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Nits? Or haemovore ticks? 136.226.55.1 20:49, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

My complements to whomever added the color dots; nicely done. -- Dtgriscom (talk) 12:54, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

I've added a link to the oldest (so far) black hole discovery -- dww-uk 2a12:f43:143e:0:e14c:82a5:e0bc:8959 (talk) 13:19, 26 February 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Small red arachnids... seem familiar to anyone else? GreyFox (talk) 14:49, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Note: While the graphic designer might be accurate, for an astronomer, any color that is even slightly "orange" is designated as "red", similarly anything slightly "green" is designated as "blue". Analagous to how any atom with more protons than helium is called a metal in astronomy. Galeindfal (talk) 15:53, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

I think any explanation of a comic with an acronym in it should include an explanation of what that acronym is...for those of us who can't remember? (JWST) I also don't know how to insert this "user" signoff? 68.55.172.115 (talk) 16:18, 26 February 2026 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

For a user signoff, you put four tildes at the end of your post(this is a tilde: ~ ). JWST stand for "James Webb Space Telescope". Xkdvd (talk) 17:15, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

...and the instructions are at the top of this very page's 'source' (hidden, unless editing, but that's when you need to know).

For me, right now, I have to switch to the symbolic keyboard then to the second symbolic keyboard, to find the "~" 'key'. Physical keyboards might have it either near the Enter key (like my UK keyboards, shift-'hash symbol'/"#", not to be confused with the 'pound symbol'/"£" that's shift-3!) or up in the top-left key (US-style 'default' layouts, where it should be just to the left of the "!", i.e. shift-'back apostrophe'). Non-anglo keyboards might hide it away somewhere else, or even need something special that doesn't show on your keytops at all, perhaps because of having to show the more common local versions of letters-with-various-other-diacritics.

You can also press the penultimate button just above this edit textbox (between the "no-W", for temporary disabling of wikimarkup, and the black-line on the end of that set of icon-buttons, which gives the Horizontal Rule markup; it's supposed to be a "signature" in icon form, but wouldn't blame you for not realising this). It actually gives you " --~~~~" (the double-hyphen isn't necessary, it's just a historic "signature marker" from decades ago when it mattered more in text-only messages, like email and usenet, but it also doesn't hurt). But, at the very least, it saves you having to find the tilde on your (on-screen?) keyboard if you're not too sure where to find it. 82.132.236.204 17:46, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Personally, I recommend adding the '--' directly into your signature if/when you make an account. --DollarStoreBa'al^Converse (BLM) 18:11, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Strictly, the "(line-feed, then) hyphen hyphen space (then line-feed)" of old (which was adopted as a marker for easily automated removal of signatures when replying/forwarding in a reply-chain) isn't really a useful thing, though. As well as being the wrong way round ("space hyphen hyphen (nospace!)", and inline preferably with no linefeeds directly before or after it, the signature (especially yours) is already fairly obvious by eye. And, because it's easy to not add it (and potentially easier than to add it, signature-button aside!), there's no convention to leave it in for the sake of some probably misguided script that tries to use it as a signature-delimitter but really would be missing so many honestly-added versions (that lack it) if that was its solidly preprogrammed expectation.

Yes, add it if you want to. But its utility is far less than in the days when even Outlook Express (with its problematic default to "top posting", as well, which lead to a general decline in readability and good-netiquette from which we haven't really recovered) would take "<LF>-- <LF>" as a cue and tidy things up just enough to be useful. :p 82.132.236.204 18:52, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

And don't forget the security implications of top-posting... (Not that this was your point, but it was another problem with OE/Outlook/everything that followed and also switched everything topsy-turvy like that...) 81.179.199.253 19:22, 26 February 2026 (UTC)
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