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Astronomy

New distance record for galaxies

Nature volume 502, pages 459–460 (2013)Cite this article

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Spectroscopic measurements of 43 candidates for distant galaxies have confirmed one to be the most remote galaxy securely identified to date — and it forms stars more than 100 times faster than the Milky Way. See Letter p.524

Owing to the expansion of the Universe that occurs as time passes, the wavelength of light emitted from galaxies far away undergoes redshift on its way to Earth — an effect that provides a direct measurement of distance. However, this process also results in key spectral features, such as the (typically brightest) Lyman-α line of hydrogen, eventually getting redshifted out of the visible-light range, which renders spectroscopic identification of the most distant galaxies challenging. Thus, despite the identification of dozens of strong candidates for very-high-redshift galaxies in deep imaging studies conducted4 with the infrared-sensitive Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope, progress in the spectroscopic confirmation of such candidates has slowed significantly in recent years.

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Figure 1: Cosmic history and the first galaxies.

ADAPTED FROM REF. 1/BRANT ROBERTSON/UNIV. ARIZONA; CMB: ESA/PLANCK COLLABORATION; INSET: V. TILVI (TEXAS A&M), S. FINKELSTEIN (UT AUSTIN), THE CANDELS TEAM, HST/NASA

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  1. Dominik A. Riechers is in the Department of Astronomy, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA.,

    Dominik A. Riechers

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  1. Dominik A. Riechers
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Correspondence to Dominik A. Riechers.

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Riechers, D. New distance record for galaxies. Nature 502, 459–460 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/502459a

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