Using Hubble, Astronomers Spot Oldest Spiral Galaxy Ever Seen
Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!
Quote:
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Astronomers have witnessed for the first time a spiral galaxy in the early universe, billions of years before many other spiral galaxies formed. Residing in the constellation Pegasus and named BX442, the surprise spiral has a redshift of 2.18, which means it is 10.7 billion light-years from Earth and therefore existed just 3 billion years after the big bang.
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Light from this galaxy has been traveling to Earth for about
10.7 billion years. Would you imagine that? Here it is:
Astronomers thought the spiral was an illusion. But using a special instrument called the OSIRIS spectrograph they determined BX442 was really a rotating spiral.
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceno...ral.html?rss=1