Taking advantage of the phenomenon of gravitational lenses, the Hubble Telescope spotted some of the oldest galaxies that exist in the universe.
According to Discovery News, an international team of astronomers noticed galaxies that formed some 600 million to 900 million years after the Big Bang. Peering out into deep space with the Hubble, astronomers use galaxies' gravitational forces as a lens to see even farther.
"The faintest galaxies detected in these Hubble observations are fainter than any other yet uncovered in the deepest Hubble observations," Johan Richard, from the Observatoire de Lyon, France, said in a press release.
The researchers will release their findings in a future edition of The Astrophysical Journal.
"If we took into account only the contributions from bright and massive galaxies, we found that these were insufficient to reionize the universe," study lead author Hakim Atek, of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, said in the release. "We also needed to add in the contribution of a more abundant population of faint dwarf galaxies."
The researchers detailed 250 new galaxies that formed just hundreds of millions after the formation of the universe.
"Hubble remains unrivaled in its ability to observe the most distant galaxies," study co-author Mathilde Jauzac, from Durham University, U.K., said in the release. "The sheer depth of the Hubble Frontier Field data guarantees a very precise understanding of the cluster magnification effect, allowing us to make discoveries like these."
