Distant Galaxy GN-z11 in GOODS North Survey

Hubble Space Telescope astronomers, studying the northern hemisphere field from the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS), have measured the distance to the farthest galaxy ever seen. The survey field contains tens of thousands of galaxies stretching far back into time. Galaxy GN-z11, shown in the inset, is seen as it was 13.4 billion years in the past, just 400 million years after the big bang, when the universe was only three percent of its current age. The galaxy is ablaze with bright, young, blue stars, but looks red in this image because its light has been stretched to longer spectral wavelengths by the expansion of the universe.

About the colours

The main GOODS-N composite includes exposures acquired by the ACS and WFC3 instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope. Several filters were used to sample broad wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: F435W (B) + F606W (V) Green: F814W (I) + F850LP (z) Red: F125W (J) + F160W (H)

About the data

Recent data were obtained from the HST proposal 13871 , PI: P. Oesch (Yale University), G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz), I. Labbé (Leiden University), G. Brammer (STScI), R. Bouwens and M. Franx (Leiden University), P. van Dokkum (Yale University), D. Magee (UCO/Lick Observatory/University of California, Santa Cruz), I. Momcheva (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), R. Smit (Durham University), M. Ashby, G. Fazio, J. Huang, and S. Willner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), V. Gonzalez (University of California, Riverside), R. Skelton (South African Astronomical Observatory), M. Trenti (University of Melbourne), and L. Spitler (Macquarie University/Australian Astronomical Observatory).

The science team includes: P. Oesch (Yale University), G. Brammer (STScI), P. van Dokkum (Yale University), G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens, I. Labbé, and M. Franx (Leiden University), I. Momcheva, M. Ashby, and G. Fazio (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), V. Gonzalez (University of California, Riverside), B. Holden and D. Magee (UCO/Lick Observatory/University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Skelton (South African Astronomical Observatory), R. Smit (Durham University), L. Spitler (Macquarie University/Australian Astronomical Observatory), M. Trenti (University of Melbourne), and S. Willner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics).