Baby Boom Galaxy
| Baby Boom Galaxy | |
|---|---|
Baby Boom Galaxy (Green-Red Splotch)
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| Observation data | |
| Constellation | Sextans |
| Right ascension | 10h 00m 54.52s |
| Declination | +2° 34′ 35.17″ |
| Redshift | 280,919 km/s |
| Distance | 12.2 Billion Light Years |
| Characteristics | |
| Type | Starburst galaxy, SMG |
| Other designations | |
| EQ J100054+023435, Baby Boom Galaxy | |
The Baby Boom Galaxy is a starburst galaxy located 12.2 billion light years away. Discovered by NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, the galaxy is the record holder for the brightest starburst galaxy in the very distant universe, with brightness being a measure of its extreme star-formation rate. The Baby Boom Galaxy has been nicknamed "the extreme stellar machine" because it is seen producing stars at a rate of up to 4,000 per year (one star every 2.2 hours). The Milky Way galaxy in which Earth resides turns out an average of just 10 stars per year.
The Baby Boom Galaxy was discovered and characterized in 2008 using a suite of telescopes operating at different wavelengths. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Japan's Subaru Telescope, atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, first spotted the galaxy in visible-light images, where it appeared as an inconspicuous smudge due to its great distance. It wasn't until the Spitzer and the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, also on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, observed the galaxy at infrared and submillimeter wavelengths, respectively, that the galaxy was formally discovered.
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