Astronomers get first glimpse of the most distant known galaxy

Just 700 million years after the big bang, our most distant known galaxy was a cauldron of star production, churning out new suns hundreds of times faster than our own Milky Way galaxy, scientists say. This spring, roughly 13 billion years later, astronomers have first glimpsed evidence of this ferocious activity and confirmed the distance and age of the galaxy now designated as z8_GND_5296, according to Los Angeles Times.

In a paper published recently in the journal Nature, researchers said discovery of the galaxy suggested our early universe was capable of far more star production than previously believed.

Radiant energy, including visible light, travels no faster than 186,000 miles per second. Since it took that energy almost 13 billion years to travel from z8_GND_5296 to the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, researchers can only study the galaxy as it was in its infancy.

It would appear very different if we were to glimpse its form in real time, scientists say. In order to determine the galaxy's age and distance from Earth, scientists study its so-called redshift, or the lengthening wavelengths of energy emitted by its stars over great distances. The higher the redshift, the greater the distance.

It's only recently, however, that technology has advanced to the point that high redshifts can be studied. In the case of z8_GND_5296, scientists used Keck's MOSFIRE, the Multi-Object Spectrometer for Infra-Red Exploration, for this purpose. It's likely then that further galaxies will be observed.

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