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Farthest galaxy found 400 million years after Big Bang

Saturday, 05 March 2016 2:39 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 05 March 2016 7:47 PM ]

The GN-z11 galaxy, shown in the inset, is seen as it was 13.4 billion years in the past, just 400 million years after the Big Bang. (NASA)

Astronomers have recently detected the farthest galaxy ever seen in the early universe, dating back to about 13.4 billion years ago, just 400 million years after the Big Bang.

An international team of researchers discovered the surprisingly luminous infant galaxy, named GN-z11, in the direction of the constellation of Ursa Major with the aid of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

The GN-z11 galaxy, almost 25 times smaller than our own Milky Way Galaxy, could serve as an open window to study the early universe, while it is quite probable that the galaxy itself no longer exists.

“We’ve taken a major step back in time, beyond what we’d ever expected to be able to do with Hubble. We see GN-z11 at a time when the universe was only three percent of its current age,” said principal researcher, Pascal Oesch, of Yale University.

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