GLASS-z13 - The Oldest Galaxy Discovered

GLASS-z13, the most distant known galaxy. (Image credit: Naidu et al. (2022))

The James Webb Space Telescope found the galaxy GLASS-z13 in July 2022. It was only discovered 300–400 million years after the Big Bang, making it one of the earliest galaxies ever found. It was found with GLASS-z11, a galaxy comparable to GN-z11 and one of the oldest galaxies ever found.

The Hubble Space Telescope held the previous record, which made the 2016 discovery of GN-Z11 in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major. A strikingly brilliant young galaxy began to emit light just 400 million years after the Big Bang, 13.4 billion years ago.

The researchers from the Harvard University and Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics in Massachusetts discovered GLASS-z13, which they believe to be the oldest galaxy ever discovered, as well as another galaxy, GLASS-z11, that is comparable in age to GN-Z11.

Milky Way Galaxy

Compared to Earth's Milky Way Galaxy, which is 100,000 light-years across, both galaxies are considerably smaller. The calculated distance between GLASS-z13 and GLASS-z11 is 1,600 light years for GLASS-z13 and 2,300 light years for GLASS-z11.

The discovery was made just over a week after the JWST revealed its initial photographs, and the teams will continue to analyze the data to validate it. The JWST is the only instrument used for this type of research.

There is yet a lot more to come for the JWST as it continues its mission to study the early universe. The most distant star ever recorded was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope earlier this year, breaking the previous record. Its light, known as Earendel, took 12.9 billion years to reach Hubble. The JWST will be used by those researchers to do additional studies. Future observations will no certain astound given how much more potent JWST is than Hubble.