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SCIENCESaturday 5 March 2016
Astronomers spot record distant galaxy from early cosmos
SETH BORENSTEIN This image provided by the Space Telescope Science Institute, taken with the Hubble Space Tele- team looked beyond that
AP Science Writer scope, shows a hot, star-popping galaxy that is far, far away, farther than any previously detected, bright line to a longer but
WASHINGTON (AP) — As- from a time when the universe was a mere toddler of about 400 million years old. messier light wave spec-
tronomers say they have trum, using what’s consid-
discovered a galaxy that is Associated Press ered a rougher tool, Illing-
farther away than any pre- worth said.
viously detected, from a And that fuzziness masks an stunning, really bright about 580 million years af- Competing astronomer
time when the universe was incredible rate of star for- young stars” and all around ter the Big Bang. For a long Richard Ellis at the Europe-
a mere toddler of about mation that’s 10 times more us would be “very messy time, competing teams of an Southern Observatory,
400 million years old. frenetic than our Milky Way, looking objects” that are astronomers were just try- who found the previous far-
By employing a different said study co-author Ga- galaxies just forming, not ing to reach a redshift of 9, thest galaxy, was skeptical.
technique, one that that briel Brammer, an astrono- the large bright spirals we about 550 million years af- He said the light signatures
has raised some skepticism, mer at the Space Tele- think of as galaxies, said ter the Big Bang. used by Oesch’s teams are
a team of astronomers ex- scope Science Institute. study co-author Garth Ill- But the new discovery blew “noisier and harder to inter-
posed a time period they’d “It really is star-bursting,” ingworth at the University of all that out of the water, pret” and may overlap with
thought was impossible to Brammer said. “We’re get- California Santa Cruz. surprising the team that competing nearby stars or
observe with today’s tech- ting closer and closer to Astronomers measure the found it, said study lead au- galaxies.
nology. when we think the first stars distance an object by cal- thor Pascal Oesch of Yale. And for GN-z11 to be that
They used the Hubble formed ... culating how much the The way they did it was dif- visible it would have to be
Space Telescope and There’s not a lot of actual light changes from blue ferent than the old meth- three times brighter than
found the light wave signa- time between this galaxy to red, called redshift. This ods of using a standard typical galaxies, he said in
ture of an extremely bright and the Big Bang.” discovery is of a galaxy light wave signature mark- an email.
galaxy 13.4 billion light- If we were back in time and with redshift of 11.1; until er, with the spectrum mea- Oesch said the team made
years away, according to near this galaxy (named this discovery, the previous sured precisely by ground sure “this was as clean as
a study published Thursday GN-z11), we’d see “blue, highest redshift was 8.68, telescope. Instead, the possible a measurement”
by Astrophysical Journal. with little contamination.
The margin of error is plus or He said the technique they
minus 5 million light-years. A used is starting to become
light-year is about 5.8 trillion standard.
miles. But Oesch, Brammer and Ill-
It shatters old records for ingworth said not to expect
distance and time and may new discoveries farther
remain the farthest that and older than this one, be-
can be seen for years, until cause they have pushed
a new space telescope is Hubble to its limit. Only
launched, the team of as- when the next NASA space
tronomers said. telescope is launched and
With that light signature, operating, probably in
astronomers were able to 2019, will astronomers see
produce a photo of this farther.
galaxy that’s fuzzy and all Astronomer Dimitar Sassel-
too deceptive in color. It ov at Harvard, who wasn’t
appears darkish red and part of the research, called
indistinct, when in reality the discovery exciting and
it’s so hot it is bright blue, interesting: “Seeing and
but the light has traveled understanding the first gal-
so long and far that it has axies and the first stars is an
shifted to the very end of essential part of our origins
the color spectrum. story.”q
