Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a new baby blue galaxy that is 13.1 billion light-years away from the Earth, thus sparking a new adventure for them as the galaxy is thought to be one of the universe’s first generation of galaxies. The team of scientists credited with the discovery of the baby blue galaxy, now known as EGS-zs8-1, are associated with Yale and the University of Santa Cruz. The new find is thought to have formed about 670 million years after the Big Bang that began the creation of the known universe.
The actual discovery of the baby blue galaxy that started this scientific adventure was made in 2013 by Yale astronomer Pascal Oesch, as he looked through photos sent to Earth by the Hubble Space Telescope. Oesch noticed a bright item in a photo, and then used the Spitzer Space Telescope to take a closer look at it. He needed the assistance of a third telescope at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii to confirm the age of the baby blue galaxy and the distance it was from the Earth.
Baby Blue Galaxy Actually a Look Back in Time
In studying these ancient galaxies like the baby blue galaxy, scientists are actually partaking in a look back in time. What this means is that even though the EGS-zs8-1 galaxy isn’t the furthest galaxy from Earth, it is the galaxy the furthest back in time than any other galaxy discovered. This new discovery of the baby blue galaxy is about 30-million years further back in time than any other galaxy man has found so far, thus making it an exciting adventure for the lucky scientists who discovered it. Their findings are to be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. The baby blue galaxy is said to have been formed during what science calls the Dark Ages, when the stars and galaxies in the universe were just beginning to form. It is thought that only a mere one 500th of the universe had been formed at that period in time.
Baby Blue Galaxy Poses New Mysteries
The discovery of the baby blue galaxy brings new questions as much as it answers old ones. It confirmed that large galaxies were in the universe early on, but now the scientists also have found that these older galaxies were made up of a different kind of physical property than those of today. The baby blue galaxy has unique colors and that has sparked questions about the earliest galaxies and what went on in the making of them. It is thought the color pattern may have come from the fact that the stars were formed quickly, interacting with various primordial gases in space. So, the adventure will continue as the scientists do more research on this and other galaxies as well as other planetary bodies in our universe.
