It is a galaxy that, in the cosmic perspective, is a mere infant.
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have imaged a galaxy that formed 13.4 billion years ago, just 400 million years after the Big Bang created our universe.
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“We’ve taken a major step back in time, beyond what we’d ever expected to be able to do with Hubble. We see GN-z11 at a time when the universe was only three per cent of its current age,” said principal investigator Pascal Oesch of Yale University, Connecticut.
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Astronomers measure the distance of cosmological objects based on its redshift: light emanates from galaxies as they stretch longer distances, producing redder wavelengths as our universe expands.
Using data collected from the Spitzer space telescope, astronomers have determined that GN-z11 is 25 times smaller than our own Milky Way. It also has just one per cent of our galaxy’s mass in stars. However, GN-z11 is producing stars at a furious rate — 20 times faster than the Milky Way.
The previous record holder for most distant galaxies ever seen was 13.2 billion years old.
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