ASU astronomers discover exceptionally distant galaxy

The discovery of an exceptionally distant galaxy by a team of ASU astronomers was the subject of a recent article appearing in Astronomy Magazine. At a distance of 13 billion light years away, the galaxy ranks among the top 10 most distant objects currently known in space.

Astronomers at the School of Earth and Space Exploration were able to identify the remote galaxy through the combination of the Magellan Telescopes’ tremendous light-gathering capability and exquisite image quality, and the unique ability of the IMACS instrument to obtain either images or spectra across a wide field of view.

The team, led by James Rhoads, Sangeeta Malhotra and Pascale Hibon, first spotted the distant galaxy during the summer of 2011 at the Carnegie Institution’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.

“This galaxy is being observed at a young age,” said Rhoads. “We are seeing it as it was in the very distant past, when the universe was a mere 800 million years old. This image is like a baby picture of this galaxy, taken when the universe was only 5 percent of its current age. Studying these very early galaxies is important because it helps us understand how galaxies form and grow.”

The galaxy, designated LAEJ095950.99+021219.1, is a rare example of a galaxy from that early epoch, and it will help astronomers make progress in understanding the process of galaxy formation.

“As time goes by, these small blobs which are forming stars, they’ll dance around each other, merge with each other, and form bigger and bigger galaxies,” said Malhotra. “Somewhere halfway through the age of the universe they start looking like the galaxies we see today – and not before. Why, how, when, where that happens is a fairly active area of research.”