The light XE8 & #; re the EGS-zs8-1 galaxy has 13.1 billion XE9 ann & #; & # es xE0; reach us.
Light from the galaxy EGS- zs8-1 took 13.1 billion years to reach us. – Pascal Oesch, Ivelina MB / AP / SIPA

MC with AFP

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It is located 13.1 billion light years from Earth. It is therefore also the number of years it took for the EGS-halo zs8-1 galaxy, the farthest and oldest ever observed by humans, to reach us.

This galaxy would date, according to the astronomers, 670 million years after the Big Bang that created the universe, there is 13.8 billion years. It was initially detected due to its bright colors by the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. This is one of the brightest celestial objects and the most massive of this period of infancy of the universe, these emphasize astronomers whose observations are published in the American scientific journal Astrophysical Journal Letters .

“A new piece to the puzzle”

His observation and measurement of its distance from Earth have been possible thanks to a relatively new instrument of the Keck I telescope Hawaii called MOSFIRE allowing astronomers to study several galaxies simultaneously. “Each confirmation adds a new piece to the puzzle of how the first generations of galaxies were formed,” says Pieter van Dokkum, an astronomer at Yale University, co-author of the work.

” One of the most spectacular discoveries of the Hubble and Spitzer in recent years is the unexpected number of bright galaxies in the early universe, close to the time when the first galaxies formed, “said Garth Illingworth , professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California in Santa Cruz, another co-author.

Galaxies very different from those that we know

measuring the distance allows astronomers to determine that it continued at that time to form stars very quickly, about 80 times faster than our Galaxy, the Milky Way. The new observations Keck Observatory telescopes, Hubble and Spitzer raise new questions. They confirm that these massive galaxies existed when the universe but physical properties are very different from those of galaxies around us today.

Scientists are eagerly awaiting the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which, a hundred times more powerful than Hubble, will even further back in time as 300 million years after the Big Bang and drill the first galaxies secrets.