New Record For Most Distant Galaxy Cluster
By SPACE.com staff
posted: 22 October 2009
01:53 pm ET
The most distant known galaxy cluster has been discovered with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
The cluster, known as JKCS041, is located about 10.2 billion light-years away and is observed as it was when the universe was only about a quarter of its present age. It beats the previous record holder, XMMXCS J2215.9-1738, by about a billion light-years.
Galaxy clusters — clumpings of galaxies held together by mutual gravitational attraction — are the largest gravitationally bound objects in the universe. Finding such a large structure at this very early epoch can reveal important information about how the universe evolved at this crucial stage.
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