The universe itself is about 13.8 billion years old

Sep 4, 2015 20:21 GMT  ·  By

Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology think they might have zoomed in on the farthest - which also makes it the oldest - galaxy so far documented anywhere in the cosmos. 

The galaxy, described in a recent report in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, is called EGS8p7.

The California Institute of Technology team estimate that it is about 13.2 billion years old. By comparison, the universe itself is said to have formed around 13.8 billion years ago.

This means that EGS8p7 likely came into being soon after the Big Bang, when the cosmos was less than 1 billion years old, the astronomers explain.

EGS8p7 was first identified as a potential candidate for one of the earliest objects in the cosmos based on data delivered by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Then, the researchers used the multi-object spectrometer for infrared exploration at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to determine its redshift and measure the distance to it.

“Redshift results from the Doppler effect, the same phenomenon that causes the siren on a fire truck to drop in pitch as the truck passes.”

“With celestial objects, however, it is light that is being 'stretched' rather than sound; instead of an audible drop in tone, there is a shift from the actual color to redder wavelengths,” they explain.

Their calculations led them to a redshift of 8.86 for this old and distant galaxy. Before this, the most distant galaxy on record was one with a redshift of 7.73.

The images below show the newly discovered galaxy as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope (in the wide view and the top right frame) and then in infrared by the Spitzer Space Telescope (the bottom right inset).

The galaxy seen by Hubble and Spitzer
The galaxy seen by Hubble and Spitzer

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The Hubble Space Telescope
The galaxy seen by Hubble and Spitzer
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