Hubble sets a record by viewing the farthest galaxy ever seen

NASA’s hubble telescope has set a record by viewing farthest galaxy ever seen, an infant galaxy as it existed 13.4 billion years ago.

It is seeing into the pasts since the galaxy is so distant that it takes light 13.4 billion years to travel from the galaxy to earth. The international team astronomers operating the telescope saw it as it existed just 400 million years after the big bang, when the universe was only three per cent of its current age.

Thus, the telescope works something like the fictitious time machine. By looking back through space, astronomers actually look back through time. Now, they have pushed the Hubble to its limits and shattered the cosmic distance record by viewing the farthest galaxy ever seen.

Named GN-z11, the newly found galaxy is surprisingly bright. At a spectroscopically confirmed redshift of 11.1, the galaxy is even farther away than originally thought. It existed only 200 million to 300 million years after the time when scientists believe the very first stars started to form. At a billion solar masses, it is producing stars surprisingly quickly for such an early time.

This new distance record will most likely stand until the launch of Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, which will look even deeper into the universe for early galaxies.

GN-z11 is 25 times smaller than the Milky Way and has just one per cent of our galaxy's mass in stars. However, the new born GN-z11 is growing fast, forming stars at a rate about 20 times greater than our galaxy does today. This makes such an extremely remote galaxy bright enough for astronomers to find and perform detailed observations.