Herschel observatory gets close up to distant galaxies

These results are from the very first data taken as part of the Herschel-ATLAS project, the largest imaging survey conducted so far with the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory.

The survey team found a new way of locating a natural phenomenon that acts like a zoom lens and allows astronomers to see galaxies when the Universe was only a few billion years old. This provides key insights into how galaxies have changed over the history of the cosmos. 

Dr Loretta Dunne from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nottingham is joint leader of the Herschel-ATLAS survey.

‘What we’ve seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg,’ she said. ‘Wide area surveys are essential for finding these rare events and since Herschel has only covered one-thirtieth of the entire Herschel-ATLAS area so far, we expect to discover hundreds of lenses once we have all the data. Once found, we can probe the early Universe on the same physical scales as we can in galaxies next door.’