Furthest Protocluster of Galaxies Ever Seen
Astronomers have uncovered a cluster of galaxies in the initial stages of development, making
it the most distant such grouping ever observed in the early Universe.
In a sky survey made in near-infrared light Hubble has spotted five galaxies clustered together.
They are so distant that their light has taken 13.1 billion years to reach us. These galaxies are among the brightest galaxies at that early stage of the Universe’s history. They are also very young: we are seeing them just 600 million years after the Universe’s birth in the Big Bang.
Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the Universe, comprising hundreds to thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity.
This developing cluster, or protocluster, seen as it looked 13 billion years ago, presumably has grown into one of today’s massive cities of galaxies, comparable to the nearby Virgo cluster of more than 2000 galaxies.
Please click here to read the full press release, courtesy of the European Space Agency.
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