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A look at the past

Hubble and Keck Team Up to Find Farthest Known Galaxy in Universe

An international team of scientists discovered this primeval galaxy located at a distance of about 13 billion light years. That means we are looking at how this galaxy was 13 billion years ago when this light that we are seeing left for its journey towards earth.

This amazing observation was made possible by a dense group of galaxies called Abell 2218, which is about 2 billion light years away. Its gravitational field is so intense that it acts like a lens and bends and magnifies light coming from distant and faint objects behind it that we would not be able to see otherwise.

Different colored arcs in the picture are star forming galaxies with different red-shifts caused by their distances. The red fringes showed by the outlines is the image of this farthest galaxy with the most ever recorded red-shift of 7. That puts its distance at 13 billion light years. This research has allowed astrophysicists to make a more accurate estimate of the age of the universe at 13.7 billion years, rather than the earlier estimate of 12-15 billion years.