Galaxies from the Early Universe Found in Galactic Cluster
New members of a protocluster of galaxies, 13 billion years old, have been seen for the first time. What do we know about this family of galaxies from the ancient Universe?
New galaxies in an ancient cluster have been detected by astronomers using an array of instruments, including the Subaru, Keck, and Gemini Telescopes. This protocluster of galaxies, 13 billion years old, is the oldest such grouping ever found. At the time this protocluster formed, the Universe was the 800 million years old, just six percent of its current age.
In the modern Universe, galaxies clusters can contain hundreds or thousands of members, but how these structures form remains a mystery. In order to better understand contemporary clusters, astronomers carefully study protoclusters, dense systems of dozens of galaxies in the ancient Universe.
“A protocluster is a rare and special system with an extremely high density, and not easy to find. To overcome this problem, we used the wide field of view of the Subaru Telescope to map a large area of the sky and look for protoclusters,” said Yuichi Harikane, of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
A map of the Universe created by the Subaru telescope revealed a potential protocluster, dubbed z66OD. Ancient galaxies seen here are huddled…
