It’s also perhaps the earliest galaxy in the cosmos.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Astronomers have spotted a brilliantly azure-hued galaxy that is farther away than any other known. The galaxy EGS-zs8-1 lies 13.1 billion light-years from Earth, the farthest distance ever measured between Earth and another galaxy.
The universe is thought to be about 13.8 billion years old, according to Space.com, so galaxy EGS-zs8-1 is also one of the earliest galaxies to form in the cosmos.
Yale and University of California Santa Cruz scientists utilized three separate telescopes to spot and calculate the age of the cosmic cluster of star systems. By measuring how the light has shifted, they determined the galaxy, named EGS-zs8-1, is from about 670 million years after the Big Bang, reported Fox News.
When astronomers look farther away from Earth, they are looking back further in time, which makes the discovery of EGS-zs8-1 humanity’s furthest look back in time. It is 13.1 billion light-years away, in the constellation Boötes; a light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.
The photo they took was from a crucial time in the early universe, after what was called the Dark Ages, when galaxies and stars were just starting to form and the universe was only one five hundredth the mass it is now, Garth Illingworth of UC Santa Cruz. Illingworth co-authored the paper that announced the discovery, published the Astrophisical Journal Letters.
“We’re looking here at an infant that’s growing at a great rate,” he told Fox News. The galaxy was reportedly 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.”