Universe: Astronomers discover the oldest galaxy

After a total of 1200 hours of observation time with Subaru telescopeto me telescope vistaInfrared telescope in UK (UKIRT) and the Spitzer Space Telescope The object called HD1 was discovered, where researchers have been around Yuichi Harikan Now a report in the specialized journal “The Astrophysical Journal”.

“Finding HD1 among more than 700,000 objects has been very hard work,” the astronomer from the University of Tokyo explains in a statement about the study.Prepress). More observations with the Atacama telescope (Alma) confirmed that the object is 100 million light-years away from the previous record holder GN-z11.

Primordial stars or black hole?

HD1 is extremely bright in the ultraviolet range, and at first the study authors assumed it was an “ordinary” galaxy. But after calculating the rate at which new stars are forming at it – more than 100 per year, ten times faster than expected – they developed new theories, which they published in another publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters” (Prepress) introduce.

The researchers have two possible explanations for HD1’s properties: the brightness and the rapid pace of star formation could mean that HD1 is home to so-called III stars, the first stars in the universe that have not been seen before. But at the center of HD1 there could also be a supermassive black hole 100 million times larger than our Sun.

planned review

“The first stars were much more massive, brighter, and hotter than modern stars,” says the co-author. Fabio Baccucci From the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. This could explain the high luminosity of HD1.

But the black hole may also be the cause: When it devours huge amounts of gas, high-energy photons are emitted. If so, it would be the oldest supermassive black hole ever discovered, very close in time to the Big Bang about 13.8 billion years ago. So it must have grown very quickly.

In the near future, astronomers want to use James Webb Space Telescope Keep checking the standard distance for HD1. Because the new space telescope can look even further into the past. Perhaps there will also be new evidence for one hypothesis or the other.