Hubble telescope found a galaxy scientists thought was impossible to see

Hubble telescope has recorded the distant galaxy MXDFz4.4, which astronomers previously considered almost impossible to observe. 

This reports Space.

The discovery helped scientists better understand how clusters of massive stars in young galaxies during the early stages of the Universe’s development affected the ionization of neutral gas.

What is known about the new galaxy

After the Big Bang, space was filled with neutral hydrogen that absorbed ultraviolet radiation and made the Universe opaque.

Only hundreds of millions of years later did this gas begin to ionize, allowing light to travel freely through space.

This period in the history of the Universe is called the epoch of reionization. Scientists have tried to determine what exactly caused this process: supermassive black holes or the first generations of hot stars.

Galaxy MXDFz4.4 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang, concept / NASA

Observations of MXDFz4.4 showed that young massive stars played the key role.

«Observing such a galaxy was considered impossible», — said the lead researcher Ilias Huvarts.

According to him, astronomers expected the hydrogen fog would be too dense and completely obscure the source of radiation.

The newly discovered galaxy MXDFz4.4 is roughly 100 times smaller than the Milky Way, yet it forms new stars ten times faster.

At the center of the galaxy is a dense cluster of young, hot stars. They produce a huge amount of ultraviolet radiation that gradually «burned through» the hydrogen fog around the galaxy.

Researchers also found that stars were born not continuously but in short powerful bursts. Each such burst generated a new wave of radiation that cleared an increasingly larger area of the surrounding space.

Scientists plan to search for more similar galaxies to better understand how the epoch of reionization ended and why the Universe became the way we see it today.

Hubble telescope

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