Hubble telescope finds furthest galaxy ever seen
In this image, astronomers use the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and a cosmic zoom lens to uncover the farthest known galaxy in the Universe. The newly discovered galaxy, named MACS0647-JD, is very young and only a tiny fraction of the size of our Milky Way. The object is observed 420 million years after the Big Bang, when the Universe was 3 percent of its present age of 13.7 billion years.
NASA says that it spotted a far off galaxy that may be the furthest object ever seen from Earth.
The galaxy, MACS0647-JD, is believed to be 13.3 billion light-years from Earth with every light-year representing 5,878,625 million miles – pretty far away.
Given its distance what scientists see is now much older taking into consideration how long its light takes to reach Earth, said Phys Org.
Indeed, peering at the galaxy is looking back in time only 420 million years after the Big Bang when the universe was three percent of its current age.
The finding was made by the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH).
This system uses galaxy clusters as telescopes to illuminate distant galaxies behind them, reported the Daily Mail.
"While one occasionally expects to find an extremely distant galaxy using the tremendous power of gravitational lensing, this latest discovery has outstripped even my expectations of what would be possible with the CLASH program," said study co-author Rychard Bouwens of Leiden University, reported Space Daily.
"The science output in this regard has been incredible."
The new galaxy is only 600 light-years across compared to our galaxy, the Milky Way, which is 150,000 light-years across.