The farthest galaxy discovered 13,5 billion light-years away

An international team of astronomers has discovered the farthest astronomical object in the universe, a galaxy called HD1, about 13,5 billion light-years away. The researchers, led by Fabio Pakucci of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the United Kingdom, published in the Royal Astronomical Society's "Monthly Notices" magazine, saying that the galaxy is not too bright are clear.

It is estimated that this galaxy either forms stars at an impressive rate (more than 100 each year, at least ten times what is expected), or contains an oversized black hole about 100 million times larger than the Sun, which could explain why the high brightness of the HD1. As it "swallows" huge amounts of gas, high-energy photons can be emitted from the area around the black hole. If so, it's the earliest known black hole, much closer to the original Big Bang than has been found to date.

HD1 was discovered after 1.200 hours of observations with various telescopes (Subaru, VISTA, Spitzer. UK Infrared). Observations from the large ALMA telescope in Chile followed, showing that HD1 is 100 million light-years away from GN-z11, the record holder for the oldest and most distant galaxy. HD1 observations will follow from the new James Webb Space Telescope, which is "working" this year to confirm that it is the new holder of the galactic distance record.

Source: RES