The universe is less than 14 billion years old, and because light takes time to travel, looking far enough away is like looking back in time. The most distant object ever observed was a galaxy that formed 300 million years after the Big bang.
The use of four different telescopes and more than 1,200 hours of observations made it possible to identify the HD1 galaxy. The ALMA is an array of 66 radio telescopes working together in Chile.
It was difficult to find HD1 out of more than one million objects because of its extreme distance. HD1's red color matched the expected characteristics of a galaxy 13 billion light-years away, giving me goose bumps when I found it.
HD1 is extremely far away and bright in the ultraviolet wavelength. The first population of stars that formed in the universe were more massive and hotter than modern stars. Population III stars are capable of producing more UV light than normal stars, which could clarify the extreme ultraviolet luminosity of HD1.
It's difficult to understand the nature of a source so far away, and so many hours of observation were needed. Some colors and shapes of the flag can be seen, but not in their entirety. It is a long game of analysis and exclusion.
The research was published in the Astrophysical Journal and Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.
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