A team led by Haojing Yan at the University of Missouri-Columbia has taken advantage of the gravitational lensing effect of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723. Massive objects such as a cluster of galaxies magnify the view of objects behind them as seen from Earth.
It’s called a gravitational lensing, and that lens allowed the team to track down 88 galaxies that would have a redshift greater than 11. A few of those galaxies would have a redshift of 20, meaning those galaxies go back only 200 million years after that. the great explosion. This would make it the oldest ever discovered.
Another team led by Stephen Finkelstein of the University of Texas at Austin discovered a galaxy with a redshift of 14.3. That means the galaxy, which the team named the Macy’s Galaxy after Finkelstein’s daughter, dates back 280 million years after the Big Bang.
A third team, led by University of Edinburgh doctoral student Callum Dunant, may have set the record more sharply. He discovered a galaxy that would have a redshift of 16.7. This may go back about 250 million years after the Big Bang.
However, it should also be noted that these studies are preliminary and the findings have not been confirmed by spectroscopy.
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