American astronomers have announced the discovery of a massive young galaxy, with a mass eight times greater than that of the Milky Way.
This galaxy, named HUDF-JD2, is the most distant galaxy ever observed. Its light, captured by the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes, has been traveling toward Earth for 800 million years since the Big Bang.
“This is a very short time for the formation of such a large galaxy,” said Bahram Mobasher, an astronomer at the European Space Agency and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
The mass and development of this galaxy when the universe was only 800 million years old has surprised the astronomical community. Until now, scientists believed that the first galaxies formed when the universe was young contained far fewer stars than those formed later, such as the Milky Way in our Solar System.
According to experts, this discovery indicates that the majority of galaxies formed very early. Professor Richard Ellis, an astronomer from the California Institute of Technology and one of the astronomers who discovered this galaxy, stated: “If the measurement of this galaxy’s distance is confirmed, it will demonstrate that galaxies were very active during an even earlier stage in the history of the universe.”
Astronomers discovered HUDF-JD2 among 10,000 galaxies in a small patch of sky known as the “Hubble Ultra Deep Field” (UDF). Research on this galaxy will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Astrophysical.
T.VY (According to AFP, Newscientist)
