Distant Galaxies in GOODS North

This is a portion of a deep-sky Hubble Space Telescope survey called GOODS North (Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey). The view is a composite of images taken in visible and near-infrared light. Researchers have circled four unusually red objects that appear as they existed just 500 million years after the big bang. They appear red because their light has been stretched to longer infrared wavelengths by the expansion of the universe. These extremely compact and bright galaxies present a puzzle to researchers because they are much more luminous than anything previously seen at such an early epoch. The young galaxies are bright because they are forming stars at a much faster rate than for other galaxies found at such early times.

The science team members are G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz), P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz; Yale University), R. Bouwens, I. Labbé, R. Smit, and M. Franx (Leiden University), P. van Dokkum and I. Momcheva (Yale University), M. Ashby, G. Fazio, J.-S. Huang, and S. Willner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), V. Gonzalez (University of California, Riverside), D. Magee (University of California, Santa Cruz), M. Trenti (University of Cambridge), G. Brammer (STScI), R. Skelton (South African Astronomical Observatory), and L. Spitler (Macquarie University/Anglo-Australian Observatory).