EGSY8p7: Keck Observatory Measures Most Distant Galaxy

A team of astrophysicists using the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii has successfully measured the farthest galaxy ever recorded and more interestingly, captured its hydrogen emission as seen when the Universe was less than 600 million years old. Additionally, the method in which the galaxy called EGSY8p7 was detected gives important insight into how the very first stars in the Universe lit-up after the Big Bang.

EGSY8p7 is the most distant confirmed galaxy whose spectrum obtained with the W. M. Keck Observatory places it at a redshift of 8.68 at a time when the Universe was less than 600 million years old. The illustration shows the remarkable progress made in recent years in probing early cosmic history. Hydrogen emission from EGSY8p7 may indicate it is the first known example of an early generation of young galaxies emitting unusually strong radiation

Telescopes Team Up to Find Distant Uranus-Sized Planet Through Microlensing

The W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have made independent confirmations of an exoplanet orbiting far from its central star. The planet was discovered through a technique called gravitational microlensing. This finding opens a new piece of discovery space in the extrasolar planet hunt: to uncover planets as far from their central stars as Jupiter and Saturn are from our sun.

Dragonfly 44

A collection of unidentified blobs was discovered toward the Coma cluster of galaxies, using the Dragonfly Telephoto Array. One of these puzzling objects, Dragonfly 44, was studied in detail using the Keck Observatory and confirmed as an ultra-diffuse galaxy. Even though it is 60,000 light years across, It is so far away that it appears as only a faint smudge. 

W. M. Keck Observatory

The Fluffiest Galaxies

An international team of researchers led by Pieter van Dokkum at Yale University have used the W. M. Keck Observatory to confirm the existence of the most diffuse class of galaxies known in the universe. These “fluffiest galaxies” are nearly as wide as our own Milky Way galaxy – about 60,000 light years – yet harbor only one percent as many stars. 

W. M. Keck Observatory

BX442, a spiral galaxy from the depths of time

A Grand-Design Spiral Galaxy before its Time – Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Artist's rendering of galaxy BX442 and companion. Credit: Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics; Joe Bergeron