The inset image of the farthest confirmed galaxy observed to date has been colored blue as suggestive of its young stars. (Photo : NASA/European Space Agency/Yale/University of California, Santa Cruz)
The farthest galaxy from the Earth observed to date is 13.1 billion light-years away and has moved even farther away, said scientists in a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. In comparison, the Universe is 13.8 billion years old.
Using three different telescopes to calculate the distance to a galaxy called EGS-zs8-1, Yale and University of California Santa Cruz scientists determined this galaxy was formed just 670 million years after the Big Bang.
The light from the galaxy took 13 billion years to reach the Earth. Since the Universe has continued expanding since the Big Bang, galaxy EGS-zs8-1 is now 30 billion light-years from the Earth based standard cosmological calculations.
This galaxy in the constellation Bootes is among the Universe's first generation of galaxies that formed 13.1 billion years ago, said ABC News
The photo of galaxy EGS-zs8-1 also shows what the Universe looked like during the "Dark Ages", when galaxies and stars were just starting to form. At this time, the Universe was one five hundredth the mass of what it is now.
The new measurements allowed astronomers to see the galaxy in its infancy. Despite its youth, this galaxy is one-sixth as massive as the Milky Way, which is 10 billion years old.
"We're looking here at an infant that's growing at a great rate," said astronomer Garth Illingworth of the University of California Santa Cruz, who co-authored the paper.
"The galaxy was giving birth to stars at 80 times the rate our Milky Way does now. These objects would like nothing like our sun. It would look much, much bluer."
Knowing the distance to this galaxy allows astronomers to calculate other properties of the young galaxy, such as the kinds of stars being formed and the speed of star formation.
Why galaxies were able to form and grow so quickly after the Big Bang remains a mystery, however. The answer to this vexing question might be forthcoming when a new generation of instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope and the Thirty Meter Telescope planned for Mauna Kea in Hawaii begin operating.
