New record set for most distant known galaxy

Nature : A team led by Richard Ellis of Caltech examined seven galaxies, each of which formed less than 600 million years after the Big Bang. One of the galaxies, which the researchers measured to be 13.29 billion light-years away from Earth, set a new record for oldest known galaxy. For their study, Ellis and colleagues used the Hubble Space Telescope‘s Wide Field Camera 3, combined with earlier studies of the area known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. They used exposure times twice as long as any that the camera had previously recorded and a filter that helped them eliminate closer light sources. Another team had determined the redshift of the record-setting galaxy to be 10, dating it to 482 million years after the Big Bang. But Ellis’s team remeasured the redshift to a value of 11.9, which would make the galaxy much older. Both teams of researchers warn, however, that the calculated ages are greater than expected for the formation of large galaxies and the discrepancy still isn’t understood.