Thursday, October 21, 2010

Hubble Finds The Oldest Galaxy So Far


Tim Sayell send in a great article concerning a recent discovery by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope.

Studying a NASA photograph, released earlier this year, European astronomers have uncovered a galaxy 13.1 billion years old. That makes the universe just shy of 600 million years old when it was a separate entity. It is quite literally the earliest and most distant galaxy seen so far. It is so old in fact that the astronomers do not even think it exists in it observed form any longer. It was most likely swept up by younger and much larger galaxies.

What makes this discovery equally important is the age of the galaxy in the image. Astronomers put it at apx. 100 million years. They can say that with a fair amount of certainty because of the lack of heavy metals and an abundance of massive blue giant stars. The age is important in that at the time this old galaxy was first formed, the universe was itself only 100 million or so years old. Astronomers feel that they are very close to discovering objects from the creation of the universe.

complete article in Yahoo News

2 comments:

Gary Baker said...

Wow!

Beam Me Up said...

Hi Gary!
Yeah, that covers my first reaction too! Its like this pic my brother gave me for Christmas. Its from the hubble and it is just FULL of stars. Before Hubble they called this area the great dark spot. Hubble continues to just amaze with its performance! For a device that was almost junked, its doing some amazing things!