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Astronomers unveil the farthest galaxy
Phys.Org ^ | 05-05-2015 | Provided by Yale University

Posted on 05/05/2015 10:50:45 AM PDT by Red Badger

An international team of astronomers led by Yale University and the University of California-Santa Cruz have pushed back the cosmic frontier of galaxy exploration to a time when the universe was only 5% of its present age.

The team discovered an exceptionally luminous galaxy more than 13 billion years in the past and determined its exact distance from Earth using the powerful MOSFIRE instrument on the W.M. Keck Observatory's 10-meter telescope, in Hawaii. It is the most distant galaxy currently measured.

The galaxy, EGS-zs8-1, was originally identified based on its particular colors in images from NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. It is one of the brightest and most massive objects in the early universe.

Age and distance are vitally connected in any discussion of the universe. The light we see from our Sun takes just eight minutes to reach us, while the light from distant galaxies we see via today's advanced telescopes travels for billions of years before it reaches us—so we're seeing what those galaxies looked like billions of years ago.

"It has already built more than 15% of the mass of our own Milky Way today," said Pascal Oesch, a Yale astronomer and lead author of a study published online May 5 in Astrophysical Journal Letters. "But it had only 670 million years to do so. The universe was still very young then." The new distance measurement also enabled the astronomers to determine that EGS-zs8-1 is still forming stars rapidly, about 80 times faster than our galaxy.

Only a handful of galaxies currently have accurate distances measured in this very early universe. "Every confirmation adds another piece to the puzzle of how the first generations of galaxies formed in the early universe," said Pieter van Dokkum, the Sol Goldman Family Professor of Astronomy and chair of Yale's Department of Astronomy, who is second author of the study. "Only the largest telescopes are powerful enough to reach to these large distances."

The MOSFIRE instrument allows astronomers to efficiently study several galaxies at the same time. Measuring galaxies at extreme distances and characterizing their properties will be a major goal of astronomy over the next decade, the researchers said.

The new observations establish EGS-zs8-1 at a time when the universe was undergoing an important change: The hydrogen between galaxies was transitioning from a neutral state to an ionized state. "It appears that the young stars in the early galaxies like EGS-zs8-1 were the main drivers for this transition, called reionization," said Rychard Bouwens of the Leiden Observatory, co-author of the study.

Taken together, the new Keck Observatory, Hubble, and Spitzer observations also pose new questions. They confirm that massive galaxies already existed early in the history of the universe, but they also show that those galaxies had very different physical properties from what is seen around us today. Astronomers now have strong evidence that the peculiar colors of early galaxies—seen in the Spitzer images—originate from a rapid formation of massive, young stars, which interacted with the primordial gas in these galaxies.

The observations underscore the exciting discoveries that are possible when NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is launched in 2018, note the researchers. In addition to pushing the cosmic frontier to even earlier times, the telescope will be able to dissect the galaxy light of EGS-zs8-1 seen with the Spitzer telescope and provide astronomers with more detailed insights into its gas properties.

"Our current observations indicate that it will be very easy to measure accurate distances to these distant galaxies in the future with the James Webb Space Telescope," said co-author Garth Illingworth of the University of California-Santa Cruz. "The result of JWST's upcoming measurements will provide a much more complete picture of the formation of galaxies at the cosmic dawn."

Journal reference: Astrophysical Journal Letters

The galaxy EGS-zs8-1 sets a new distance record. It was discovered in images from the Hubble Space Telescope's CANDELS survey. Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Oesch and I. Momcheva (Yale University), and the 3D-HST and HUDF09/XDF teams


TOPICS: Astronomy; Education; Religion; Science
KEYWORDS: astronomy; creation; egszs81; galaxy; gammaraybursts; science; space; supernova; time
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Save this Title! We can use it again..............
1 posted on 05/05/2015 10:50:45 AM PDT by Red Badger
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To: SunkenCiv; KevinDavis

Astronomy Ping!..............


2 posted on 05/05/2015 10:52:28 AM PDT by Red Badger (Man builds a ship in a bottle. God builds a universe in the palm of His hand.............)
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To: Red Badger

The place where Democrats occupy is about the farthest galaxy from reality.


3 posted on 05/05/2015 10:54:02 AM PDT by Obadiah (Israel had King Manasseh, America has Obama.)
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To: Red Badger

What if there is no edge to the universe?


4 posted on 05/05/2015 10:55:25 AM PDT by lurk
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To: Red Badger
13 billion years

Is 13 billion a big number? Now what's the national debt?

5 posted on 05/05/2015 10:56:35 AM PDT by CodeJockey
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To: Red Badger
The new distance measurement also enabled the astronomers to determine that EGS-zs8-1 is was still forming stars rapidly, about 80 times faster than our galaxy.
6 posted on 05/05/2015 10:57:00 AM PDT by TigersEye (STONE COLD ZOMBIE SCOURGE)
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To: lurk

“O” will impose one by executive order... then there WILL be one!! :)


7 posted on 05/05/2015 10:57:58 AM PDT by SMARTY ("When you blame others, you give up your power to change." Robert Anthony)
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To: Red Badger
Better closeup:


8 posted on 05/05/2015 10:59:04 AM PDT by frithguild (The warmth and goodness of Gaia is a nuclear reactor in the Earth's core that burns Thorium)
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To: lurk

If it’s expanding, what is it expanding into?..............


9 posted on 05/05/2015 10:59:20 AM PDT by Red Badger (Man builds a ship in a bottle. God builds a universe in the palm of His hand.............)
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To: frithguild

Those were the days...............


10 posted on 05/05/2015 11:00:29 AM PDT by Red Badger (Man builds a ship in a bottle. God builds a universe in the palm of His hand.............)
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To: lurk
What if there is no edge to the universe?

That would mean that objects of that distance should be found in every direction.

11 posted on 05/05/2015 11:02:39 AM PDT by Praxeologue ( ')
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To: Red Badger
Those were the days...............

That's what they're saying on EGS-zs8-1.

12 posted on 05/05/2015 11:05:55 AM PDT by TigersEye (STONE COLD ZOMBIE SCOURGE)
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To: lurk

If there is an edge to the universe, what’s on the other side?


13 posted on 05/05/2015 11:13:08 AM PDT by tractorman (I never miss a chance to tweak a liberal.)
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To: Red Badger

“an exceptionally luminous galaxy more than 13 billion years in the past”

Meaning it’s more than 13 billion light years away, a light year being the *distance” light travels in a year at its speed of 186,000 miles/second. One light year works out to about 5.9 TRILLION miles. So 13 BILLION x 5.9 TRILLION is how far away this thing is in miles.

Or 76.7 x 1,000,000,000 x 1,000,000,000,000 Miles


14 posted on 05/05/2015 11:19:43 AM PDT by ETL (ALL (most?) of the Obama-commie connections at my FR Home page: http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl/)
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To: frithguild
Remembered those as a kid, real cool, but limited trunk space :)
15 posted on 05/05/2015 11:22:00 AM PDT by The Cajun (Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, Mark Levin, Mike Lee, Louie Gohmert....Nuff said.)
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To: ETL

Farther than the farthest star?...........maybe not:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/28apr_grbsmash/


16 posted on 05/05/2015 11:25:25 AM PDT by Red Badger (Man builds a ship in a bottle. God builds a universe in the palm of His hand.............)
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To: tractorman; lurk
tractorman :" If there is an edge to the universe, what’s on the other side?"

We fall off the edge.
Souce : Christopher Columbus crew on the Santa Maria

17 posted on 05/05/2015 11:25:35 AM PDT by Tilted Irish Kilt
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To: ETL
So 13 BILLION x 5.9 TRILLION is how far away this thing is was in miles.

Except we ain't where we was 13 billion years ago.

18 posted on 05/05/2015 11:28:06 AM PDT by TigersEye (STONE COLD ZOMBIE SCOURGE)
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To: TigersEye

But we’re talking about today. Not 13 billion years ago. That galaxy is at a distance 13 billion light years away *today*. 13 billion years ago we were ‘inches’ away from it, or something like that. We were so close we could smell it!


19 posted on 05/05/2015 11:33:40 AM PDT by ETL (ALL (most?) of the Obama-commie connections at my FR Home page: http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl/)
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To: Red Badger
Farther than the farthest star?...........maybe not

Close, but no cigar, exploding or otherwise. The galaxy is MORE THAN 13 billion light years away. The long-dead star that created the gamma-ray burst, a 'mere' 13 billion LY.

From your link...

"April 28, 2009: NASA's Swift satellite and an international team of astronomers have found a gamma-ray burst from a star that died when the universe was only 630 million years old--less than five percent of its present age. The event, dubbed GRB 090423, is the most distant cosmic explosion ever seen.

(snip)

The burst occurred at 3:55 a.m. EDT on April 23rd. Swift quickly pinpointed the explosion, allowing telescopes on Earth to target the burst before its afterglow faded away. Astronomers working in Chile and the Canary Islands independently measured the explosion's redshift. It was 8.2, smashing the previous record of 6.7 set by an explosion in September 2008. A redshift of 8.2 corresponds to a distance of 13.035 billion light years."

20 posted on 05/05/2015 11:43:10 AM PDT by ETL (ALL (most?) of the Obama-commie connections at my FR Home page: http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl/)
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