Planetary News Archive

November 12, 2003

"Subaru" Discovers The Farthest Galaxy

National Astronomical Observatory announced November 5 that its Subaru observation team discovered the most distant galaxy. Subaru is a huge telescope of 8.2 meter in diameter, located atop Mt. Mauna Kea in Hawaii Island. The universe is now considered approximately 13.7 billion years old, so the telescope looked into the celestial region about 900 million years after it was born.

The galaxy is approximately 12.83 billion light years away from Earth, lying in the direction of the Constellation Coma. The new find turned out to be about 300 light years older than the previous record-holding galaxy which the same NAO's team discovered last March. According to Mr. Kashiwagawa, one of the members of the observation team, Subaru captured nine out of ten distant galaxies discovered this year.