yungcosmonauts:Faintest Galaxy Yet Seen in the Early UniverseUsing the combined power of the Hubble
yungcosmonauts:Faintest Galaxy Yet Seen in the Early UniverseUsing the combined power of the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, astronomers have spotted the faintest object yet seen in the early universe. Shown here in the magnified inset, this faint compact galaxy is about the size of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of our Milky Way galaxy.While diminutive in size, the galaxy is forming new stars at a rapid rate. This could indicate that this is the growing core of what could evolve into a full-sized galaxy. Nicknamed Tayna (meaning “first-born” in the Aymara language), this dim and petite object was formed just 400 million years after the Big Bang. Tayna and other similar dim objects may be representative of conditions in the early universe, providing valuable information on the growth and evolution of the first galaxies.Detection of this faint object was aided by a natural zoom lens provided by the universe itself. Lying between us and Tayna is a massive cluster of galaxies. Located some 4 billion light-years away, MACS0416.1-2403 has the mass of a million billion suns. That concentration of matter bends and magnifies the light of far more distant objects behind it, and makes Tayna appear 20 times brighter. -JFImage credit: NASA, ESA, and L. Infante (Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile)Source -- source link
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