The team at NASA behind the Hubble Telescope has managed to outdo themselves. As reported by NASA today, astronomers have managed to catch a glimpse of an infant galaxy called GN-z11.
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According to one of the researchers, a man named Pascal Oesch, we’re seeing light from GN-z11 that is so old, we’re getting a look at what the universe looked like when it was only 3% of its current age, just 400 million years after the Big Bang. The new distance record id making the known universe look like a baby. Astronomers are, thanks to these visibility records, finally seeing older and older galaxies. This gives them an idea as to the nature of the universe, and how galaxies grow. It’s surprising that a glaxy so large would exist so close to the universe’s inception. The exact age of the galaxy can be determined spectroscopically, by examining the various colors in its spectrum.
The below video, made by NASA, illustrates just whereabouts in the night sky GN-z11 can be seen – it’s behind Ursa Major – and just about how far away it is. GN-z11 is about a 25th the size of the Milky Way, but is surprisingly bright.
NASA has been hard at work on another telescope – the James Webb Telescope – that will be even more powerful than the Hubble, and which is set for launch in 2018. That one may be able to catch light from 200 million years before the Big Bang, and maybe even older. We are tantalizingly close to seeing light from Big Bang itself.
Photo: ESA/Hubble
Witney Seibold is a contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and the co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. He also contributes to Legion of Leia and to Blumhouse. You can follow him on “The Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
