Galaxy at dawn of time bursts with stars

This image shows one of the most distant galaxies known, called GN-108036, dating back to 750 million years after the Big Bang that created our universe. The galaxy’s light took 12.9 billion years to reach us.

After astronomers looked at infrared observations of it they were surprised by how bright the galaxy appeared. This brightness resulted from an extreme burst of star formation — a rare event for such an early cosmic era. In fact, GN-108036 is the most luminous galaxy found to date at these great distances.

Astronomers refer to a galaxy’s distance by its redshift, a number that refers to how much the light has been stretched to longer, redder wavelengths by the expansion of the universe. Galaxies with higher redshifts are more distant, and are seen farther back in time. GN-108036 has a redshift of 7.2, making it one of only a handful of galaxies detected this far away and this early in cosmic history.

The main Hubble image shows a field of galaxies, known as the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS). A close-up of the Hubble image, and a Spitzer image, are called out at right. In the Spitzer image, infrared light is colored green and red. In the Hubble image, visible light is blue and green, while infrared light is red. GN-108036 is only detected in the infrared, and is completely invisible in the optical Hubble images, explaining its very red color in this picture.