A team of astronomers found galaxy distant 13.5 billion light years. His name is galaxy HD1. From its age, this galaxy is close to the age of the universe which is almost 14 billion years.
From this discovery, astronomers found that bright systems like HD1 could be very old. So old, this system already existed when the universe was only 300 million years old! If the James Webb Telescope confirmed HD1’s distance, it would be the most distant galaxy discovered to date.
Astronomers search distant galaxies to study how galaxies formed when the Universe was just forming. Well, we can get this information from light. So light has a constant speed, and even though it’s fast it still has its limits. Therefore, it takes time for light to reach us on Earth. Light from an object a billion light years away, left the object a billion years ago. In other words, light has already traveled a billion years to reach us!
Therefore, when astronomers observe distant objects, they are looking into the past and studying the past of the object according to the light we receive today.
HD1 is observed at a distance of 13.5 billion light years. And of course it is not easy to find galaxies that are very far away. Astronomers had to analyze more than 1,200 hours of observational data from the Subaru, VISTA, UK Infrared Telescope and Spitzer Telescopes.
It’s like looking for a (red) needle in a haystack. To find HD1, astronomers had to search among more than 700,000 objects! Galaxies that are very far away usually appear redder the farther away they are. This is because the further away from our view, the light will stretch. The more stretched light waves are, the closer they are to the red color in the spectrum. Therefore this phenomenon we call redshift.
HD1 is a very bright galaxy. Astronomers were surprised that such a bright object already existed when the Universe was very young. Since the theory of galaxy formation has not yet explained this phenomenon, the next step is to find out how the HD1 galaxy formed. Or is HD1 really a galaxy. It could be that HD1 is an active black hole.
The HD1 discovery team hopes that the James Webb Telescope will help unravel the mystery.
Cool facts:
If confirmed, HD1 would break GN-z11’s record as the most distant galaxy in the universe, 13.4 billion light years away and discovered by the Hubble Telescope.
It is not easy to produce a photo of this black hole. There are 300 researchers from 80 institutions who worked for 5 years to produce this photo. A very massive effort!
Source: This article is a republished version of Space Scoop Universe Awareness Indonesian edition. Indonesian edition of Space Scoop translated by heaven.
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