Astronomers analyzing the Hubble Deep Field — the faintest view
of the universe taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope — may
have identified what may prove to be the most distant objects
observed to date. Scattered among the nearly 2,000 galaxies in
the Hubble images, which were taken last December, researchers
at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (SUNY) and
collaborators find several dozen galaxies they believe exhibit
characteristics which make them appear to be more distant than
any seen previously. Six of the galaxies appear to be more
distant than the farthest quasars, the current distance record
holders. Their results are being published in the June 27
edition of the British science journal Nature. The candidate
galaxies are so far away they may have existed when the universe
was less than five percent its present age. If this early galaxy
population can be confirmed through further observations, it
means that such galaxies would have formed remarkably early in
the history of the univers