Seeking out starburst galaxies

Looking back on the Universe’s history for a specific patch of the sky observed by Herschel and Keck to reveal many previously unseen starburst galaxies. This graphic shows a representation of the distribution of nearly 300 galaxies in one 1.4 x 1.4 degree field of view. In total, Keck identified 767 galaxies found by Herschel.

Five starburst galaxies (as seen by the ESA/NASA Hubble Space Telescope) are shown as insets. The light from the nearest galaxy shown in the insets has been travelling towards us for 2.6 billion years, while for the furthest inset galaxy it has been travelling for 10.2 billion years.

The galaxies were first detected by ESA’s Herschel space observatory and an example of one of the far-infrared fields of view is shown in the graphic. The redshifts were determined by the ground-based W.M. Keck telescopes.