Scientists at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands have discovered in the young Universe, at a distance of 12.5 billion light years from Earth, a densely populated cluster (cluster) of galaxies, similar to the Virgo cluster, is forming. The study is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
In 2012, astronomers determined the distance to the HDF850.1 galaxy, which is characterized by the highest star formation rate in the observed Universe. They found out that she is part of a group of about a dozen protogalaxies. New observations from the Large Canary Telescope have shown that HDF850.1 is in fact in the protocluster, the largest known, consisting of at least two dozen galaxies with normal star formation rates.
The protocluster consists of zones with different evolutions, so over time it will change until it becomes similar to the Virgo cluster, located at a distance of 48-71 million light years from the Milky Way and includes more than a thousand galaxies. According to scientists, for the first time they managed to observe the distant “childhood” of such clusters, typical for the local Universe.