Researchers have spotted a far off galaxy from the early days of the universe.
The galaxy, dubbed Abell2744 Y1, is about 30 times smaller than the Milky Way but produces 10 times more stars, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) news release reported.
Researchers discovered the galaxy while testing how far back they could look into the universe's history. Abell2744 Y1 was most likely created when our 13.8 billion-year-old universe was only 650 million years old.
The finding was made using several pieces of equipment.
"Spitzer sees infrared light, Hubble sees visible and shorter-wavelength infrared light, and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory sees X-rays," the news release reported.
The telescopes employ natural lenses (cluster of galaxies that magnify light) to peer into the history of the universe.
The The Frontier Fields program, which found Abell2744 Y1, will look at a total of six galaxy clusters. Hubble images of the distant regions can help identify galaxy candidates while Spitzer can determine how far away they are; Spitzer also keeps track of how many stars are in the galaxy.
If Abell2744 Y1 is located where researchers believe it is, it would be the farthest-known galaxy.
The galaxy is believed to have a redshift ("a measure of the degree to which its light has been shifted to redder wavelengths due to the expansion of our universe") of eight; the farther away a galaxy the higher the redshift. The farthest confirmed galaxy has a redshift of seven but there are believed to be bodies with redshifts of up to 11.
"Just a handful of galaxies at these great distances are known," Jason Surace, of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, said in the news release. "The Frontier Fields program is already working to find more of these distant, faint galaxies. This is a preview of what's to come."
"The findings, led by astronomers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and La Laguna University, are accepted for publication in the scientific journal Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters," the news release reported.
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