A1689-zD1
A1689-zD1 is one of the most distant known galaxies with a redshift of z = ~ 7.6 . The discovery using the Hubble Space Telescope was announced in February 2008.
Emergence
A1689-zD1 was created only about 700 million years after the Big Bang in the so-called Dark Age of the Cosmos. According to previous theories, the Dark Age began around 400,000 years after the beginning of the universe. The expansion of the universe cooled it down and clouds of cold hydrogen formed , which stretched like dense fog in the universe. At some point the first stars and galaxies formed, the radiation of which heated the environment and drove away the "fog". It is now believed that the Dark Age ended about a billion years after the Big Bang.
discovery
The space telescope could only observe the distant galaxy with the help of the weak gravitational lensing effect , which is based on the curvature of space described in the general theory of relativity due to the effect of gravity on space-time: Abell 1689 , a galaxy cluster about 2.2 billion light-years away from Earth , bends the light of distant celestial objects behind him through its gravity and thus enlarges their images like a natural magnifying glass. Only through this gravitational lens could the original galaxy be captured by the Hubble telescope. The Spitzer infrared space telescope also provided strong clues for countless new stars in the then young galaxy, which had only a fraction of the mass of our Milky Way , by capturing the light from A1689-zD1 that radiated in the infrared range .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Spiegel online: Shortly after the Big Bang: "Hubble" photographs ancient galaxies
- ↑ NASA: Bright galaxy in early universe - Hubble finds one of the oldest galaxies