Indian Astronomers Discover One of the Farthest Star Galaxies in the Universe

  • As a landmark achievement in Space missions, Indian Astronomers have discovered one of the farthest Star galaxies in the universe.
  • India’s first Multi-Wavelength Space Observatory “AstroSat” has detected extreme-UV light from a galaxy located 9.3 billion light-years away from Earth.
  • The galaxy called AUDFs01 was discovered by a team of Astronomers led by Dr Kanak Saha from the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) Pune.
  • India’s AstroSat/UVIT was able to achieve this unique feat because the background noise in the UVIT detector is much less than one on the Hubble Space Telescope of US based NASA.
  • This discovery is a very important clue to how the dark ages of the Universe ended and there was light in the Universe.
  • We need to know when this started, but it has been very hard to find the earliest sources of light.
  • India’s first Space Observatory AstroSat, which has made this discovery, was launched by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) on September 28, 2015 during the first term of the Modi Government.
  • It was developed by a team led by ShyamTandon, Ex Emeritus Professor, IUCAA with the full support of ISRO.
  • ASTROSAT is India’s first dedicated multi wavelength space observatory. This scientific satellite mission endeavours for a more detailed understanding of our universe. One of the unique features of ASTROSAT mission is that enables the simultaneous multi-wavelength observations of various astronomical objects with a single satellite.