An article published in the journal “Astrophysical Journal” describes the discovery of the faintest galaxy in the early universe. According to this study, this galaxy was born when the universe was “only” about 400 million years old and for this reason was nicknamed Tayna, which means “first born” in the Aymara language. To detect its light the gravitational lensing effect of a galaxy cluster was used. That allowed to capture the extremely dim light of a total of 22 ancient galaxies using the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes.

This research is part of the Frontier Fields program, a 3-year survey that aims to get the deepest observations of the universe using the gravitational lensing effects of six galaxy clusters to explore more distant regions. In this case, the galaxy cluster MACSJ0416.1-2403, about 4 billion light years from Earth, was used to capture the light of Tayna and other galaxies born in the early universe.

A few weeks ago, another research used this and other clusters to discover dwarf galaxies dating back to about 600 million years after the Big Bang. Tayna, discovered by a team led by astronomer Leopoldo Infante of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, is 200 million years older.

The galaxy Tayna is comparable to the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. We see Tayna the way it looked when it was very young so inside it stars are being born at a rate ten times higher than in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Tayna may constitute the core of an object that is growing and over time has become a full-size galaxy.

This discovery is at the limits of the possibilities of the space telescopes currently in service. Only through the magnification caused by the enormous gravity of galaxy clusters that bend the light from these very ancient galaxies we can capture their extremely dim light.

The discovery of Tayna and other very ancient galaxies continues to show the usefulness of the Frontier Fields program. However, to further improve the observations of those galaxies to increase our understanding of the early universe we’ll have to wait a few more years and the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.

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