16 February
2004: On 16 February 2004, ESA announced that an international team of astronomers may have set a new record in discovering what is the most distant known galaxy in the Universe.
Located an estimated 13 000 million light-years away, the object is being viewed at a time only 750 million years after the 'Big Bang', when the Universe was barely 5 percent of its current age.
The primeval galaxy was identified by combining the power of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the W. M. Keck Telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. These great observatories got a boost from the added magnification of a natural ‘cosmic gravitational lens’ in space that further amplifies the brightness of the distant object.
The new galaxy was detected in a long exposure of the nearby cluster of galaxies Abell 2218, taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on board the Hubble Space Telescope.
