Researchers predict that this structure, which is 12.5 billion light-years away,
Clusters of galaxies are groups of galaxies thatstay together due to the action of gravity. To understand the evolution of these "cities" from galaxies, scientists are looking for emerging structures, the so-called protoclusters of galaxies, in the early universe.
In 2012, the international group of astronomersconducted an accurate determination of the distance to the galaxy HDF850.1, known as one of the galaxies with the fastest star formation in the observed Universe. To their surprise, scientists also discovered that this galaxy, which is one of the most studied regions in the sky, known as the Hubble Deep Field, is part of a group of about a dozen protogalaxies that formed during the first thousand million years of cosmic history. Before its discovery, only one other such primitive group was known.
Now, thanks to a new study using the OSIRIS instrument on Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC or GRANTECAN), the team has shown that it is one of the most densely populated regions inhabited by galaxies in the primitive universe.In addition, a detailed study of the physical properties of this system was carried out for the first time.
"Surprisingly, we found that all the members of the cluster studied so far, about two dozen, are galaxies with normal star formation, and that the central galaxy seems to dominatein the formation of stars in this structure"
Rosa Calvi
This recent study shows that it isan emerging galaxy cluster consists of different components or zones with different evolutions. Astronomers predict that this structure will gradually change until it turns into a cluster of galaxies like Virgo - the central region of the Virgo supercluster, which contains the local group of galaxies to which the Milky Way belongs.
“We see that this cluster is built like thisThe same as it was 12,500 million years ago, when the Universe was less than 10% of its current age, so we see the “infancy” of a cluster of galaxies similar to those typical of the local Universe."
Helmut Dannerbauer
The distances measured to these studied sources are in full agreement with predictions based on photometric observations made previously at GRANTECAN.
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