Astronomers Discover the Most Distant Galaxy Yet

Astronomers have found a galaxy 13.1 billion light-years from Earth, making it officially the most distant object ever detected.

A faint, infrared speck of light from this ancient galaxy, called z8_GND_5296, was spotted using the Hubble Space Telescope and one of the world's largest ground-based telescopes, a ten-meter telescope at Keck Observatory at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

Light from this baby galaxy began its journey when the universe was about 700 million years old and just emerging from the cosmic mist left over from its birth, said Casey Papovich, one of the lead authors of the study and an astronomer at Texas A&M University in College Station.

The former record holder is a fellow youngster, an ultra-faint galaxy about 100 million light-years closer to Earth.

Past claims of galaxies at these extreme distances were mined from deep field images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. But many of these would-be candidates turned out to be much closer than previously thought, according to Papovich.

How Far Back Can We Go?

Can we push the record back even further, closer to the Big Bang?

Richard Ellis, an astronomer not connected to the study, says it is definitely possible. But we do not yet have telescopes powerful enough to do the job.

"We have the capability, in principle, to push to redshifts of ten and beyond, corresponding to a time when the universe was only 350 million years old, or only 3 percent of its present age," said Ellis, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
national geographic

It is kind of a strange to me when thinking of these things. The galaxy in that pic probably doesn’t even resemble what we are seeing anymore. The light we can see left that galaxy 13.1 billion years ago. That is just mind boggling to me.

reply to post by Grimpachi


I was reading this story earlier and I couldn't help but wonder what happens when they find a galaxy that is 14 billion years or older? Specifically one that doesn't fit with the accepted age of the universe? That can't be explained by just recalculating the numbers?

I think that would be interesting.

reply to post by watchitburn


Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about something like what you are asking in a video.link

Hey Ned, we just found a galaxy 15 billion light years away, what do you think?

Gee Homer, I don't know...maybe the universe is bigger and older than we thought.

When it comes to the age of the universe, its size and the date of the Big Bang, it's all just a WAG. Since we have as yet to find the end of the universe it's not possible to state how old or big it is. That being said, it is really great when they discover galaxies even further away. Has to make you wonder what someone over there would be wondering if they just discovered our galaxy.

The numbers will keep getting older and older and older; our technology is still ridiculously limited.

What's mind-boggling is the realization that either the universe is infinite, or it stops at some point and then what? or even stranger, that there may be multiple universes.

reply to post by Grimpachi


Interesting story, but it was posted yesterday. On my tablet and can't get the link right now.

reply to post by kurthall


That's fine but it doesn't seem to be under space exploration. What forum is it in?

reply to post by Grimpachi


Ummm isn't 13.3 older than 13.1?????


Oldest Object ever found

If that galaxy no longer exists, would it just be the oldest photons discovered?

pavil
reply to post by Grimpachi

 

Ummm isn't 13.3 older than 13.1?????


Oldest Object ever found

Your source is from Nov 2012 so that could have wound up being.

"Some of our candidates have turned out to be very cold stars—brown dwarfs—in our own galaxy," he explained.

source from OP

reply to post by Grimpachi


Possibly I guess. Doesn't sound like it from the article I posted. They seem pretty sure of the size and distance of that object.

Not my area of expertise though.

reply to post by Grimpachi



www.abovetopsecret.com...

That be yesterday's thread on the matter, aye. But that one too has very few posts and flags, and owing to the nature of this news, could be getting lots more if people had their curiosity nerve tingling.

reply to post by pavil


Your article says they were trying to rule it out

Coe and his collaborators spent months ruling out alternative explanations for the object’s identity - such as red stars, brown dwarfs, and red galaxies - to conclude it was a very distant galaxy

So they were not really sure

Redshift Reveals

The only way to confirm a galaxy's true distance, however, is to do follow-up measurements analyzing the spectrum of light emitted. This can enable astronomers to determine a candidate's redshift—how far its light is shifted into the red part of the spectrum—and thereby its distance.

Redshift occurs because wavelengths of light stretch out as galaxies move away from observers on Earth. So the higher the redshift number, the more distant the object from Earth.

Papovich's team found this faint galaxy's redshift was 7.5, compared with the previous record holder's 7.2.

"Until you have a redshift, there is always some doubt about the exact nature of the galaxy," said Papovich.

"All the other objects out there with claimed 'most distant galaxy' in their titles are candidates selected using only imaging, and no spectroscopic confirmation like what we have done here."

That seems to pretty much explain things.

I do not quote the entire articles in the OP T&C says you can only quote 3 paragraphs or 10% of a article though they let you get away with a little more sometimes. I have gotten a infraction and my OP sniped for it before. So all I can say is first check the OP source when you have questions.

reply to post by Aleister


I somehow completely missed that. I think my eyes glazed over when reading the ZG-#### part. Oh well mods can delete.

reply to post by Grimpachi


Your thread has some very interesting data that I don't remember from the other thread. Because it was minimally posted on, as this one is, it makes me wonder why this isn't more of a story. Thanks for the thread!