Most distant galaxy ever observed is 30 billion light-years away

BBC : First detected by the Hubble Space Telescope, galaxy z8_GND_5296 has a redshift, confirmed by the Keck Observatory, of 7.51, which makes it the most distant galaxy observed so far. The galaxy started creating stars some 13 billion years ago, or just 700 million years after the Big Bang. It was discovered by Steven Finkelstein of the University of Texas at Austin and colleagues, whose study appears online in Nature. The researchers determined the galaxy’s distance by its color, or the amount of redshift caused by the stretching of its light waves as the universe expands. Despite its modest size, it has one of the highest star production rates of any known galaxy—about 330 per year, more than 100 times faster than the Milky Way. Astronomers are hopeful that the next generation of telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, will allow us to see even farther back in time.