Hubble Space Telescope Discovers Seven New Galaxies, Including Oldest Recorded

The Hubble Space Telescope made an astonishing discovery of the existence of seven galaxies right after the Big Bang. One of them was even recorded as existing a record 380 million years after the creation of the universe.

This potential galaxy, known as UDFj-39546284, had already been detected previously but researchers thought it had formed 480 million years after the Big Bang. It was first announced by Garth Illingworth and Rychard Bouwens in a Nature paper in 2011. However, the new discoveries indicate that it is in fact more distant than previously thought. According to Space.com there is still a great deal of research on its age and existence necessary to confirm whether UDFj-39546284 is in fact a galaxy.

The other six galaxies discovered were all created between the era of 400 and 600 million years after the Universe's birth. More importantly, the discovery established that the formation of galaxies and stars-known as the "Cosmic Dawn"-- was a gradual process and not a sudden one. "The cosmic dawn was probably not a single, dramatic event," notes study lead author Richard Ellis, of Caltech in Pasadena.

In order to obtain the findings, Ellis and his team pointed at an "empty" region of the sky known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The telescope observed the region for numerous hours in order to build sufficient light to spot the distant objects. Using special filters, astronomers measured how much light from the galaxies has been stretched by the expansion of space. This is known as their redshifts and they enable researchers to calculate the distance to each galaxy and reveal their ages.

Because of the findings, some researchers are asserting that these are still not the first generations of stars in the universe. Professor Dunlop of Edinburgh's Institute noted that "we're still not seeing the first generation of stars - the so-called Population III stars. Even when we push to less than what is now 5% of the age of the Universe; we're still seeing second-generation, relatively evolved objects."

Unfortunately the Hubble will not be able to look that far back, but it seems that there is already another one ready to take on that challenge. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which is set to launch in 2018, will be able to fulfill this task. According to Slate, the telescope has "a bigger mirror, more sophisticated cameras, and is tuned specifically to look in the infrared."