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World's Most Powerful Telescopes Team Up With a Lens in Nature to Discover Farthest Galaxy in the Universe


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An international team of astronomers has discovered the most distant galaxy in the universe to date. They found it by combining the unique sharpness of the Hubble telescope with the light-collecting power of the W. M. Keck Telescopes – with an added boost from a gravitational lens in space.

The results show the young galaxy is as far as 13 billion light-years from Earth, based on an estimated age for the universe of approximately 14 billion years. The Hubble picture at left shows the young galaxy as a red crescent to the lower right of center. The galaxy's image is brightened, magnified, and smeared into this arc-shape by the gravitational influence of an intervening galaxy cluster, which acts like a gigantic lens. The image at upper right is a close-up of the "gravitationally lensed" galaxy. In the picture at lower right, astronomers have "unsmeared" the galaxy, revealing the galaxy's normal appearance.

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      Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contacts:
      Claire Andreoli
      NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
      claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
      Hannah Braun, Ray Villard
      Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
      Science Contacts:
      Samantha Hasler
      Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
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      Details
      Last Updated Oct 09, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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