This image of the galaxy cluster JKCS041 combines data from NASA's Chandra, the Very Large Telescope and the Digitized Sky Survery. (NASA) A cluster of galaxies has been found 10.2 billion light-years away, breaking the record for the most distant known cluster.
The cluster, designated JKCS041, is one billion light-years further away than the previous record holder.
The object was first discovered in 2006 by astronomers using the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope, but was only recently confirmed to be a galaxy cluster by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
"This discovery is exciting because it is like finding a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil that is much older than any other known," said Ben Maughan of the University of Bristol in the U.K.
"One fossil might just fit in with our understanding of dinosaurs, but if you found many more you would have to start rethinking how dinosaurs evolved," he said. "The same is true for galaxy clusters and our understanding of cosmology."
The distance of the cluster was determined by observations from the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope, the Very Large Telescope in Chile and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
Astronomers think that JKCS041 may be among the most distant galaxy clusters possible, given their current understanding of how these clusters form.
"This object is close to the distance limit expected for a galaxy cluster," said Stefano Andreon of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Milan, Italy.
Astronomers now are seeing the cluster as it was when the universe was just 3.5 billion years old.
"We don't think gravity can work fast enough to make galaxy clusters much earlier," said Andreon.
The astronomers say studying such a large object so far away will reveal more about the evolution of the early universe.
The previous distance record holder for a galaxy cluster was one 9.2 billion light-years away, discovered by ESA's orbiting X-ray telescope XMM-Newton in 2006.
Individual galaxies and gamma-ray bursts have been found even farther away. The most distant, a galaxy found by the Hubble Space Telescope, is estimated to be 13.1 billion light-years away.
