Discovery of some of the most distant galaxies in the Universe
PhD student, Samantha Hickey of the Centre for Astrophysics Research, has used some of the first observations taken with the HAWK-I near-infrared camera on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope to discover some of the most distant galaxies in the Universe. The research, which will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, shows that the number of galaxies appears to be decreasing as one approaches the time of the Big Bang. The discovery of these galaxies when the Universe was only 900 million years old (it is now 13 billion years old) demonstrates the power of these new astronomical facilities but also causes confusion as to how the Universe became transparent to radiation. The apparent lack of galaxies at the furthest reaches of the Universe means that we have not yet discovered the sources which are responsible for reionising the Universe and therefore making it transparent to light emitted from stars and galaxies. The research was also subsequently confirmed with the latest results from the new wide-field camera-3 on the Hubble Space Telescope in which Samantha and her supervisor Dr Matt Jarvis were also involved. The articles can be downloaded from astrophysics pre-print server.