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Article Images

'Big baby' galaxy found in newborn Universe

28 September 2005

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The NASA/ESA Hubble Ultra Deep Field image with the 'big baby' galaxy HUDF-JD2 at lower right. The three insets on the right show the galaxy, marked with a circle, at different wavelengths from Hubble and Spitzer observations.

Credits: NASA/ESA/ B. Mobasher (STSI and ESA)

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This image demonstrates how data from two space observatories, the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes, are used to identify one of the most distant galaxies ever seen. This galaxy is unusually massive for its youthful age of 800 million years. (After the Big Bang, the Milky Way by comparison, is approximately 13 000 million years old.) The galaxy was detected using Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS), but at near-infrared wavelengths it is very faint and red.

Credits: NASA/ESA/ B. Mobasher (STSI and ESA)

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A blow-up of one small area of the HUDF is used to identify where the distant galaxy is located. This indicates that the galaxy's visible light has been absorbed by traveling millions of light-years through intervening hydrogen.

Credits: NASA/ESA/ B. Mobasher (STSI and ESA)

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The Spitzer Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) easily detects the galaxy at longer infrared wavelengths. Spitzer's IRAC is sensitive to the light from older, redder stars, which should make up most of the mass in a galaxy. The brightness of the infrared galaxy suggests that it is very massive.

Credits: NASA/ESA/ B. Mobasher (STSI and ESA)

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