Thursday, December 01, 2011

Ultra Red Galaxies Discovered


Science Daily reports of a news type of extreme galaxy discovered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. These galaxies are so very red that not even Hubble can detect them. Spitzer it seems is much more sensitive to infrared than Hubble.

It would appear that the redness comes from a variety of causes. First is their great distance. At the very edge of the universe and created just 1 billion years after the big bang accounts for a great deal of red shift, at that distance the universe expansion causes massive red shift. Also these galaxies appear to be make up of mostly red stars plus the amount of dust between them and us causes attenuation of all but the longest wavelengths of light.

What makes these galaxies even more unusual is that at that distance, galaxies should be young proto galaxies for the most part. These galaxies have all the monikers of extreme age.

Read complete article here

photo is artist representation. courtesy of physorg.org

No comments: