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Some of the oldest and rarest clusters of galaxies in the distant
cosmos have been identified using data from two European Space Telescope missions, Planck and
Herschel.
Planck's images revealed the clumps of bright galaxies, while Herschel data allowed researchers to inspect the galactic gems more closely and confirm the discovery.
"Finding so many intensely star-forming, dust galaxies in such concentrated groups was a huge surprise," said Hervé Dole, lead author of the report from the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale in France. "We think this is a missing piece of cosmological structure formation."
In the early
universe billions upon billions of
light-years ago, Stars and galaxies
formed, then assembled into large clusters. Once the clusters formed,
under the influence of gravity, large amounts of matter collapsed, triggering the formation of new stars and galaxies.
The new findings offer astronomers a portal back to this early time, about 10 to 11 billion light-years ago. About 200 candidate objects were identified, many of which were magnified by other galaxies lying in front of them via a process called gravitational
lensing.
According to the science team, there is still more
data to dig up and reveal.
"Even when we combined the powerful capabilities of Planck and Herschel, we were only scratching the surface of the phenomena taking place at this critical era in the history of our universe, when stars, galaxies and clusters seem to be forming simultaneously," said George Helou, director of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
"That's one of the reasons this finding is exciting. It shows us that there is so much more to be learned."
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