Astronomers Sight Farthest Object Ever Discovered

UC Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University astronomers say that they have seen the most distant object known, a baby galaxy so far away that its starlight may have taken 12.2 billion years to reach Earth.

That means it is being seen as it appeared when the universe was only about 820 million years old, just a “blink of an eye” after the universe began, said astronomy professor James Graham of Berkeley.

Those numbers depend on the assumption that the universe is 13 billion years old. That is reasonable, but scientists disagree on the real age.

Astronomers cannot make out individual stars in the galaxy; only their combined light can be detected. It is the earliest starlight ever seen, Graham said.

Studying such early galaxies should help scientists discover how present-day galaxies formed and when, Graham said. The baby galaxy may have been on its way to merging with other infant galaxies to form a mature one.

Scientists have seen a series of infant galaxies at huge distances in recent years.