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Most distant object in the universe spotted by Hubble Space Telescope, shattering record for the farthest known galaxy

The galaxy is the farthest, farthest away thing that ever seen, and the light started its journey a very long time ago — just 400 million years after the universe started

Friday 04 March 2016 10:20 GMT

(ESA/Hubble & NASA)

Scientists have seen the furthest thing that humans have ever seen — and it shouldn’t even be able to exist.

A galaxy 13.4 billion light years away has been spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The new galaxy could lead scientists to question their understanding of the way that the universe evolved. A galaxy of such a size shouldn’t have been able to exist when the universe was so young, scientists have said.

Hubble telescope new galaxy

The distance away from the galaxy was measured by splitting up the light into the colours that its made up of. Since the universe is expanding, very distant objects stretch towards the red part of the colour spectrum — the more that “red shift” has happened to an object’s image, the further away it is.

The new galaxy has been named GN-z11. It takes the crown from EGSY8p7, which set the red shift record at 8.68 — the new galaxy has a red shift of 11.1.

That distance means that the light left the galaxy when the universe was in its infancy. The light came just 400 million years after the universe began, 13.8 billion years ago — meaning that scientists can look back into the very formation of the universe.

Dr Pascal Oesch, a member of the team from Yale University in the US, said: "We've taken a major step back in time, beyond what we'd ever expected to be able to do with Hubble. We managed to look back in time to measure the distance to a galaxy when the universe was only 3% of its current age."

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

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1/30Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Solar Flare

An image from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a 200,000 mile long solar filament ripping through the Sun's corona in September 2013

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Nasa Celebrates 50 Years of Spacewalking

For 50 years, NASA has been "suiting up" for spacewalking. In this 1984 photograph of the first untethered spacewalk, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless is in the midst of the first "field" tryout of a nitrogen-propelled backpack device called the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU)

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Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

A Hubble Cosmic Couple

The spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427 — more commonly known as WR 124 — and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it

ESA/Hubble & NASA

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Veil Nebula Supernova Remnant

Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled in stunning detail a small section of the Veil Nebula - expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launch

The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station. It also took caviar, ready for the satellite's inhabitants to celebrate the holidays

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Earth from the ISS

From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Black Hole Friday

Nasa celebrated Black Friday by looking into space instead — sharing pictures of black holes

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

NuSTAR

X-rays stream off the sun in this image showing observations from by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Cassiopeia A c

A false colour image of Cassiopeia A comprised with data from the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes and the Chandra X-Ray observatory

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Orion Capsule splashes down

The Orion capsule jetted off into space before heading back a few hours later — having proved that it can be used, one day, to carry humans to Mars

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Earth Observations From Gemini IV in 1965

This photograph of the Florida Straits and Grand Bahama Bank was taken during the Gemini IV mission during orbit no. 19 in 1965. The Gemini IV crew conducted scientific experiments, including photography of Earth's weather and terrain, for the remainder of their four-day mission following Ed White's historic spacewalk on June 3

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Frosty slopes of Mars

This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter

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Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Yellowstone from space

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman shared this image of Yellowstone via his twitter account

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Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Saturn

This near-infrared color image shows a specular reflection, or sunglint, off of a hydrocarbon lake named Kivu Lacus on Saturn's moon Titan

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Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Worlds Apart

Although Mimas and Pandora, shown here, both orbit Saturn, they are very different moons. Pandora, "small" by moon standards (50 miles or 81 kilometers across) is elongated and irregular in shape. Mimas (246 miles or 396 kilometers across), a "medium-sized" moon, formed into a sphere due to self-gravity imposed by its higher mass

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Solar Flare

An X1.6 class solar flare flashes in the middle of the sun in this image taken 10 September, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy

An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory. Regions of space such as this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust

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Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Mars Rover Spirit

Nasa's Mars Rover Spirit took the first picture from Spirit since problems with communications began a week earlier. The image shows the robotic arm extended to the rock called Adirondack

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Morning Aurora From the Space Station

Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station

Nasa/Scott Kelly

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Launch of History - Making STS-41G Mission in 1984

The Space Shuttle Challenger launches from Florida at dawn. On this mission, Kathryn Sullivan became the first U.S. woman to perform a spacewalk and Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space. The crew of seven was the largest to fly on a spacecraft at that time, and STS-41G was the first flight to include two female astronauts

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

A Fresh Perspective on an Extraordinary Cluster of Galaxies

Galaxy clusters are often described by superlatives. After all, they are huge conglomerations of galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter and represent the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Hubble Sees a Galactic Sunflower

The arrangement of the spiral arms in the galaxy Messier 63, seen here in an image from the Nasa Hubble Space Telescope, recall the pattern at the center of a sunflower

ESA/Hubble & NASA

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Pluto image

Four images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with colour data from the Ralph instrument to create this enhanced colour global view of Pluto

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Fresh Crater Near Sirenum Fossae Region of Mars

The HiRISE camera aboard Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter acquired this closeup image of a "fresh" (on a geological scale, though quite old on a human scale) impact crater in the Sirenum Fossae region of Mars. This impact crater appears relatively recent as it has a sharp rim and well-preserved ejecta

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Hubble Peers into the Most Crowded Place in the Milky Way

This Nasa Hubble Space Telescope image presents the Arches Cluster, the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way

NASA & ESA

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

An Astronaut's View from Space

Nasa astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo from the International Space Station on 2 September 2014

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Giant Landform on Mars

On Mars, we can observe four classes of sandy landforms formed by the wind, or aeolian bedforms: ripples, transverse aeolian ridges, dunes, and what are called “draa”

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Expedition 39 Landing

A sokol suit helmet can be seen against the window of the Soyuz TMA-11M capsule shortly after the spacecraft landed with Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan

(NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Jupiter's Great Red Spot Viewed by Voyager I

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and perhaps the most majestic. Vibrant bands of clouds carried by winds that can exceed 400 mph continuously circle the planet's atmosphere

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Chandra Observatory Sees a Heart in the Darkness

This Chandra X-Ray Observatory image of the young star cluster NGC 346 highlights a heart-shaped cloud of 8 million-degree Celsius gas in the central region

GN-z11 is thought to be 25 times smaller than the Milky Way. But it is growing fast, throwing out new stars 20 times faster than our own galaxy does.

That size should not be expected in the current understanding of how the cosmos came to evolve.

Co-author Dr Ivo Labbe, from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, said: "The discovery of GN-z11 showed us that our knowledge about the early universe is still very restricted. How GN-z11 was created remains somewhat of a mystery for now. Probably we are seeing the first generations of stars forming around black holes."

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