Most distant galaxy ever in universe discovered

Scientists, including one of Indian-origin, have discovered the most distant galaxy ever - seen as it was 700 million years after the Big Bang - providing a snapshot of the early universe. The galaxy is seen as it was when the universe was only about 5 per cent of its current age of 13.8 billion years, researchers said. The team’s observations showed that the new galaxy z8-GND-5296 is forming stars extremely rapidly - producing each year about 300 times the mass of our Sun. By comparison, the Milky Way forms only two to three stars per year. Researchers identified the very distant galaxy candidate using deep optical and infrared images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Follow-up observations of this galaxy by the Keck Telescope in Hawaii confirmed its distance. The team selected several candidates, based on their colours, from the approximately 100,000 galaxies identified in the Hubble Space Telescope images taken as a part of the CANDELS survey, the largest project ever performed by the Hubble. ‘What makes this galaxy unique, compared to other such discoveries, is the spectroscopic confirmation of its distance,’ said astronomer Bahram Mobasher.