Astronomers Found Galaxies So Far Away They Can't Be Real

In 1995 astronomers aimed Hubble at a patch of sky so dark it seemed a waste of ten precious days: the picture came back swarming with about 3,000 galaxies, each a city of stars, in a speck the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length.

In December 1995, Robert Williams, then director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, used a significant share of his discretionary Hubble time for an unusual experiment: pointing the telescope at a dark, seemingly empty patch of sky for ten consecutive days. The nothing was a small, unremarkable square of sky near the handle of the Big Dipper, chosen precisely because it looked empty. No bright stars or conspicuous nearby galaxies, nothing…

Astronomers Found Galaxies So Far Away They Can't Be Real

Astronomers Found Galaxies So Far Away They Can’t Be Real The James Webb Space Telescope keeps finding galaxies that appear too big, too bright, and too mature for their age. At the edge of the observable universe, astronomers are discovering objects that challenge the clean story of how the first stars and galaxies formed. Galaxy clusters like XLSSC 122 seem too massive and organized too early. The distant galaxy MoM-z14 appears to have been sh…