Astronomers working together from several international institutions have discovered the most distant galaxy ever, using data from the Hubble Space Telescope.


Astronomers working together from several international institutions have discovered the most distant galaxy ever, using data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

It is around 30 billion light years away, and has been confirmed using another telescope at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

It's name is just a jumble of letters, underscores, and numbers, but the galaxy is a significant find for astronomers who can study it to help them understand distant universal processes.

The galaxy is reportedly producing an unusually high number of stars for its size, which is only 1 to 2 percent the mass of our own Milky Way galaxy.

According to lead researcher Steven Finkelstein, from the University of Texas at Austin,"One very interesting way to learn about the Universe is to study these outliers and that tells us something about what sort of physical processes are dominating galaxy formation and galaxy evolution. What was great about this galaxy is not only is it so distant, it is also pretty exceptional."

Researchers were able to determine the ultra high redshift galaxy's distance from Earth by looking at what color it appeared to be through the telescope.