Galaxies in the Young Universe
Depicts: Small Region of the Constellation Sculptor
Copyright: Duccio Macchetto (ESA/STScI), Mauro Giavalisco (STScI), and NASA
This image of a small region of the constellation Sculptor, taken with a ground-based photographic sky survey camera, illustrates the extremely small angular size of a distant galaxy cluster in the night sky.
Center Image
A Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image of the farthest cluster of galaxies in the universe, located at a distance of 12 billion light-years. Because the light from these remote galaxies has taken 12 billion years to reach us, this image is a remarkable glimpse of the primeval universe, at it looked about two billion years after the Big Bang.
Right Image
This enlargement shows one of the farthest normal galaxies yet detected, (blob at center right) at a distance of 12 billion light-years (redshift of z=3.330). The galaxy lies 300 million light-years in front of the quasar Q0000-263 (z=4.11, large white blob and spike on left side of frame) and was detected because it absorbs some light from the quasar. The galaxy's spectrum reveals that vigorous star formation is taking place.
