Astronomers have identified the most distant cluster of galaxies yet. The object, called JKCS 041, is 3.1 billion parsecs away, and existed when the Universe was just a quarter of its current age, say Stefano Andreon of the Brera Astronomical Observatory in Milan, Italy, and his colleagues.
The team detected 16 of the brightest galaxies in the cluster, which consists of a gravitationally caged set of hundreds to thousands of galaxies. It is an extremely early example of the effect of gravity competing — and winning — against the dispersive effect of the Big Bang.
The researchers used both ground- and space-based telescopes, but required X-ray observations of hot gas between the individual galaxies to show that they are bound together in a cluster.
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Astronomy: Galaxies far, far away. Nature 462, 140–141 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/462140f
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/462140f
