(Newser)
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Astronomers in Chile have spotted the most distant galaxy in the universe—some 13.1 billion light years away. Its light has taken almost the whole life of the universe to get to us: The light photons detected by the astronomers started their journey when the universe was just 4% of its current age, or a mere 600 million years after the Big Bang, the Daily Telegraph reports.
The astronomers used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope to analyze the light, splitting the object’s infrared light into its individual parts and measuring the galaxy's record-setting "redshift" (as the distance between Earth and an object expand, light from said object stretches, making it redder). “These observations are at the limit of what can be achieved with the best current technology on the best telescopes available today,” said one scientist.
