Distant Galaxy Booming With Baby Stars

July 11, 2008 -- A distant galaxy is churning out stars at a prodigious rate of up to 4,000 a year, new observations show, in a finding that has left astronomers wondering if the generally accepted theory of galaxy formation is actually true.

Our own Milky Way galaxy, in comparison, creates about 10 new stars annually.

Scientists say it is not just the rate of new star formation that is puzzling; it's that fact that the star-booming galaxy dates back to a time when the universe was only about 1.3 billion years old.

"Before now, we had only seen galaxies form stars like this in the teen-aged universe, but this galaxy is forming when the universe was only a child," said Peter Capak, with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.

"The question now is whether the majority of the very most massive galaxies form very early in the universe, or whether this is an exceptional case," he added.

The discovery, reported in this week's Astrophysical Journal Letters, was made after observations by several ground- and space-based telescopes.

First, visible light images were taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and Japan's Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. Later, studies of infrared wavelengths were made by the Spitzer Space Telescope and of sub-millimeter radio waves by the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii. These results uncovered the bright, hot stars which had been obscured by dust.