The Hubble Space Telescope of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sets a new record by discovering GN-z11, the most distant galaxy located 13.4 billion light-years away from Earth.
According to International Business Times, because the light emitted from this galaxy takes billions of years to reach Hubble, this giant telescope is effectively “looking back” into the early stages of the universe.
“We have made a significant leap backwards in time, surpassing what we expected from Hubble. We can observe GN-z11 when the universe was only 3% of its current age,” stated researcher Pascal Oesch from Yale University, USA. The discovery was published in the journal Astronomy Physics.
Theoretically, the universe was born after the Big Bang approximately 13.8 billion years ago, and the distance between GN-z11 and Earth indicates that this galaxy may have formed only about 400 million years after the Big Bang.
This means GN-z11 could be one of the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang.
Galaxy GN-z11 is located 13.4 billion light-years from Earth. (Image: NASA).
The record for the most distant galaxy has changed multiple times over the past year. The Keck Observatory in Hawaii, USA, discovered the galaxy EGS-zs8-1 at a distance of 13.1 billion light-years. EGS-zs8-1 held the title of the oldest galaxy in the universe until researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) observed the galaxy EGS8p7 at a distance of 13.2 billion light-years. With this new discovery, GN-z11 officially holds the record as the most distant and oldest galaxy in the universe.
Researchers used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to determine the distance to GN-z11.
To ascertain the distance between GN-z11 and Earth, the research team looked for the level of “redshift” of GN-z11. Redshift is a physical phenomenon where light emitted from objects moving away from an observer appears redder.
Additionally, scientists also observed chemical signatures, referred to as emission lines and ultraviolet light, to estimate the distance to GN-z11.
“We specifically examined ultraviolet light because it is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum where we expect to find signs of redshift chemical signatures,” said Professor Nobunari Kashikawa from the University of Tokyo.
To resolve the high ultraviolet emissions, Kashikawa’s research team had to use the Keck I telescope in Hawaii equipped with MOSFIRE, a type of advanced ground-based spectrometer.
The distance of GN-z11 is believed to be very close to the edge of Hubble’s observational field. Galaxies of the same age or older will certainly be discovered by its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope. “The new research indicates that the Webb telescope will certainly find many galaxies ranging from the youngest to the oldest,” Illingworth stated.