Call them the “seven dwarfs.” Using the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists in the U.S. and U.K. have discovered seven distant galaxies they believe to be among the furthest and most ancient yet spotted, NASA announced Wednesday. The galaxies, which are thought to have formed about 13 billion years ago, between 350 million and 600 million years after the Big Bang, are located in the constellation Fornax, located in the Southern sky and visible to U.S. skywatchers during the winter months. One of the galaxies is a likely candidate for the furthest and most ancient yet spotted, thought to have been formed just 380 million years after the Big Bang, the light from which has has traveled some 13 billion years to reach us, allowing Hubble to see the galaxy as it looked in its, and the universe’s, earliest days. All seven galaxies were spotted during what researchers say is the “first reliable” cosmic census of this era of the Universe, which actually surveyed 20 different newly uncovered distant galaxies. “We’re quite certain that these galaxies indeed lie on the outer reaches of our visible universe,” wrote Matt Schenker, an astronomy graduate student at Caltech and one of the researchers who participated in the discovery, in an email to TPM. Read more http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.co...ith-hubble-space-telescope.php?ref=fpnewsfeed
