New View of Distant Galaxy Reveals Furious Star Formation

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These photos in visible light (left from the Hubble Space Telescope) and infrared (right from the Spitzer Space Telescope) show the location of distant galaxy GOOD 850-5 (circled). That galaxy located 12 billion light-years from Earth is forming star ...
These photos in visible light (left, from the Hubble Space Telescope) and infrared (right, from the Spitzer Space Telescope) show the location of distant galaxy GOOD 850-5 (circled). That galaxy, located 12 billion light-years from Earth, is forming stars at the prodigious rate of 4,000 Suns per year, a thousand times faster than our Milky Way. Credit: Wang et al., STScI, Spitzer, NASA, NRAO/AUI/NSF

A furious rate of star formation discovered in a distant galaxy shows that galaxies in the early universe developed either much faster or in a different way from what astronomers have thought.


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