Astronomers Confirm A Galaxy Far, Far Away As Most Distant Ever Seen

    So far.

    Kelly Oakes
    by Kelly Oakes

    BuzzFeed Staff, UK

    This red blob is the most distant confirmed galaxy astronomers have ever found.

    V. Tilvi (Texas A&M), S. Finkelstein (UT Austin), the CANDELS team, and HST/NASA

    In astronomy, being far away, also means being further back in time. This galaxy existed 700 million years after the big bang. That's barely a blink on cosmic timescales, at about 5% of the total age of the universe.

    Also: those are not stars surrounding the distant galaxy. Almost every other object in that image is a galaxy too.

    V. Tilvi (Texas A&M), S. Finkelstein (UT Austin), the CANDELS team, and HST/NASA

    It's a deep sky image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Being able to look back in time at all of these galaxies enables astronomers to work out what was going on at the start of the universe.