Astronomers report the most distant radio galaxy ever discovered

After nearly 20 years, the record of the most distant radio galaxy ever discovered has been broken. A team led by Ph.D. student Aayush Saxena (Leiden Observatory, the Netherlands) has found a radio galaxy from a time when the universe was only 7 percent of its current age, at a distance of 12 billion light-years.

The team used the Giant Meter-wave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India to initially identify the radio galaxy. The distance to this galaxy was then determined using the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii and the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona by measuring the redshift of the galaxy.

The redshift of z = 5.72 means that the galaxy is perceived as it looked when the universe was only a billion years old. This also means that the light from this galaxy is almost 12 billion years old.

Source

Credit: Leiden Observatory

This picture shows the near-infrared image in K band taken using the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, with radio emission overlaid in white. The fact that the host galaxy was not detected at infrared wavelengths from where the radio emission originates helped independently confirm the record distance of this galaxy.

Source / Image Courtesy

This picture shows the near-infrared image in K band taken using the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, with radio emission overlaid in white.