Hubble spies earliest galaxy cluster ever seen by Nicola
Guttridge for Astronomy Now Posted: 12 January 2012 Astronomers
using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered a distant
cluster of galaxies in the initial stages of construction. The
developing proto-cluster, located 13.1 billion light years away,
consists of five tiny galaxies – all very young at just 600
million years old. Astronomers imaged the cluster during its
initial stages of development, and it is seen as it appeared
some 13 billion years ago. As the cluster is observed at such an
early stage in its evolution, it is likely that if viewed today
it would be significantly more impressive, comparable to
“galactic cities” such as our neighbouring Virgo cluster of
nearly 2,000 galaxies. The observations were part of the
‘Brightest of Reionizing Galaxies’ survey, run using Hubble’s
wide field camera WFC3. The team conducting the study
deliberately hunted for very bright galaxies, as this signifies
a cluster construction zone; the team expects man