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'Teen Galaxies' Discovered

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 29, 2007

LONDON - Young galaxies, so faint that scientists struggled to prove they were there at all, have been discovered by aiming two of the world's most powerful telescopes at a single patch of sky for nearly 100 hours.

An international group of researchers has identified 27 pregalactic fragments, dubbed "teenager galaxies," which they hope will help astronomers understand how our own Milky Way reached adulthood. Cambridge University scientist Martin Haehnelt said his team used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope and Gemini Telescope in Chile to monitor a section of the universe for 92 hours - the equivalent of about 12 nights.

"The process was a bit like taking a photograph and keeping the shutter open for a very long time," Haehnelt said. "If you expose the image for long enough, you see fainter objects, such as these proto-galaxies. We took the largest telescope we could and stared through it for as long as we were allowed."

The Associated Press

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