Our ever-expanding universe is so vast that even if you traveled at the speed of light that it would currently take you approximately 13.75 billion years to travel from end to end. Scientists have now identified a galaxy so far away, that it might the farthest one we have ever seen and provide insights into galaxy development.
Galaxy MACS0647-JD lies around 13.3 billion light-years away. Since the light from the galaxy hitting us comes from over 13 billion years ago, the image of the galaxy we see comes around a mere 400 million years after the big bang, the explosive creation of our known universe.
The galaxy is less than 600 light-years across, meaning that the images we are receiving now are of the galaxy in its infancy. Studying MACS0647-JD could help astronomers better understand infantile galaxies and how they grow.
"This object may be one of many building blocks of a galaxy," said lead author of the study Dan Coe from the Space Telescope Science Institute. "Over the next 13 billion years, it may have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of merging events with other galaxies and galaxy fragments."
The galaxy was discovered using NASA's Hubble and Sptizer telescopes. By using gravitational lensing, astronomers were able to discover MACS0647-JD because its light was bent by galaxy cluster MACS J0647+7015 around 8 billion years after it left its source. This allowed for the galaxy's image to appear up to eight times larger.
"This cluster does what no manmade telescope can do," said Marc Postman from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "Without the magnification, it would require a Herculean effort to observe this galaxy."
The team of astronomers spent months trying to figure out whether the images they saw were of a star or some other cosmic object. In the end, they concluded that it was indeed a very far away galaxy.
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