Astronomers Just Discovered The Most Ancient Spiral Galaxy
Spiral galaxy A1689B11 sits behind a massive cluster of galaxies that acts as a lens, producing two magnified images of the spiral galaxy in different positions in the sky. Credit: James Josephides The most ancient spiral galaxy discovered to date is revealing its secrets to a team of astronomers at Swinburne University of Technology and The Australian National University (ANU), part of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in All Sky Astrophysics in 3-D (ASTRO 3-D). The galaxy is known as A1689B11. It existed 11 billion years in the past, just 2.6 billion years after the Big Bang, when the universe was only one fifth of its present age. It is thus the most ancient spiral galaxy discovered so far. The researchers used a powerful technique that combines gravitational lensing with the cutting-edge instrument the Near-infrared Integral Field Spectrograph (NIFS) on the Gemini North telescope in Hawai'i to verify the vintage and spiral nature of this gala
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