A rare system in the very early Universe
Date: 12 November 2017
Satellite: Herschel
Copyright: ESA/Herschel; ESO/APEX; D. Riechers et al. 2017
This image shows ADFS-27, a very rare instance of a massive object in the very early Universe.
It was first identified by scrutinising several hundred thousand galaxies observed by ESA's Herschel Space Observatory and combining them with follow-up data gathered with the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX). The image combines Herschel data collected at 350 micron (blue) and 500 micron (green) with APEX data at 870 micron (red).
Further observations obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) at higher resolution revealed that ADFS-27 consists not just of one ancient, massive galaxy, but of a pair of distinct massive galaxies about to merge.
More details in the composite image and video.
Last Update: 1 September 2019
