This star cluster is about 13.5 billion light-years away.
This region of the universe could have been home to the first stars
Just one week after the discovery of Earandel, the farthest star ever observed by Earthlings, the atlas of the universe is expanding even further. An international team of astronomers has managed to spot the farthest galaxy observed to date; nicknamed for the time being HD1. The discovery of this spectacular and distant region of the universe, located some 13.5 billion light-years away from our planet, marks a new record in the study of the universe. In fact, according to experts, this distant galaxy could shed light on a still unknown stage of the universe; the birth of the first stars.
The discovery of this distant astronomical objectpresented this Thursday in the scientific journal ‘Astrophysical Journal’, opens an exciting debate among experts on What exactly this reddish point observed in the confines of the known universe. The team responsible for discovery and study, in fact, raises two theories. HD1 may have been a galaxy that, just at the moment in which the first stars of the cosmos began to be born, generate about a hundred stars a year. Something amazing in itself. Or maybe this region of the universe contains a supermassive black hole About 100 million times the mass of our Sun.
“Answering questions about the nature of such a distant object is a challenge”
Fabio Pacucci, astrophysicist
“Answering questions about the nature of such a distant object is challenging,” he explains. Fabio Pacucci, Harvard astrophysicist and lead author of the discovery of this mysterious cosmic object. “It is like guess the nationality of a ship by the flag flying, being very far on land, with the ship in the middle of a gale and with a dense fog. Perhaps some colors and shapes of the flag can be seen, but not all of it. Ultimately, to find out what it is, we face a long game of analysis and exclusion of unlikely scenarios”, illustrates the expert after the presentation of this stellar finding.
The great unknown about the identity of this object star, and the definitive confirmation of its existence, will come from the hand of the James Webb Space Telescope. This state-of-the-art space instrument, launched just a few months ago, will study the region of the universe where HD1 is located to verify, among others, its distance from Earth. This analysis is also expected to help draw a more accurate profile about what is the red dot that has so amazed astronomers.
“Extremely Bright”
The first study of this distant and mysterious astronomical object, presented this Thursday in the scientific journal ‘Astrophysical Journal’, suggests that HD1 is extremely bright in ultraviolet light. This would suggest that, whatever it is, “in this region of the universe they are occurring, or rather they occurred, extremely powerful energetic processes“. This would fit both the theory of the galaxy that gave birth to the first stars (which, according to the researchers, should emit more ultraviolet light than the current stars) and with the thesis of the massive black hole (which could also generate an extreme luminosity as it gobbles up huge amounts of gas).
“HD1 is like a giant baby in the delivery room of the early universe”
Avi Loeb, astrophysicist
“HD1 is like a giant baby in the delivery room of the early universe“, explains, using a metaphor, the researcher Avi Loeb, co-author of the discovery of this stellar object. According to this expert, this celestial body was formed only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. “If there really is a black hole in HD1, must have grown from a massive seed and at an unprecedented rate. One more time, nature seems to be more imaginative than us“, affirms enthusiastically the researcher.
record discovery
“When we discovered this object we got a little goosebumpsbecause the reddish color matches surprisingly well with the characteristics expected for a galaxy located about 13.5 billion light-years away,” says Yuichi Harikane, an astronomer at the University of Tokyo and one of those responsible for this record findingin a press release sent after the debut of this news.
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According to the experts, the discovery of HD1 has been possible thanks to a meticulous work of analysis of more than 1,200 hours of spatial data and the joint work of different space telescopes around the world. First of all, astronomers collected and studied information captured by instruments such as Japan’s Subaru, Chile’s VISTA, the UK’s infrared and the Spitzer space observatory. From there, they tracked over 700,000 space objects. The analysis of these data revealed the presence of this distant galaxy hitherto unseen.
For confirm the existence of this region of the universeand rule out a possible sighting error, the experts made follow-up observations through the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (SOUL). And, indeed, thanks to this analysis they confirmed that the galaxy that is the protagonist of this discovery was there. Some 100 million light-years beyond the object known as GN-z11, which until now it held the record for the most distant galaxy. The podium, until proven otherwise, now belongs to HD1.