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The Hubble Space Telescope Key Project team today announced that it has completed efforts to measure precise distances to far-flung galaxies, an essential ingredient needed to determine the age, size and fate of the universe.

The team used the Hubble telescope to observe 19 galaxies out to 108 million light-years. They discovered almost 800 Cepheid variable stars, a special class of pulsating star used for accurate distance measurements. Here is a picture of one of those galaxies. It is the spiral galaxy NGC 4603, the most distant galaxy in which Cepheid variables have been found. It is associated with the Centaurus cluster, one of the most massive assemblages of galaxies in the nearby universe.

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      Last Updated Mar 31, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
      Contact Media Claire Andreoli
      NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
      Greenbelt, Maryland
      claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
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      Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland
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      Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

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      NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected unexpected light from a distant galaxy. The galaxy JADES-GS-z13-1, observed just 330 million years after the big bang (corresponding to a redshift of z=13.05), shows bright emission from hydrogen known as Lyman-alpha emission. This is surprising because that emission should have been absorbed by a dense fog of neutral hydrogen that suffused the early universe. NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Witstok (University of Cambridge, University of Copenhagen), J. Olmsted (STScI) Before and during the era of reionization, the immense amounts of neutral hydrogen fog surrounding galaxies blocked any energetic ultraviolet light they emitted, much like the filtering effect of colored glass. Until enough stars had formed and were able to ionize the hydrogen gas, no such light — including Lyman-alpha emission — could escape from these fledgling galaxies to reach Earth. The confirmation of Lyman-alpha radiation from this galaxy, therefore, has great implications for our understanding of the early universe.
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      View/Download the research results from the journal Nature.
      Media Contacts
      Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
      NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
      Bethany Downer – Bethany.Downer@esawebb.org
      ESA/Webb, Baltimore, Md.
      Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
      Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
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      Last Updated Mar 25, 2025 Editor Marty McCoy Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
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