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Oldest Space Object To Date
Wind Walker writes "CNN has an excellent article regarding a recently-discovered galaxy that's more than 14 billion light years away. "So what?", you're probably asking. Well, this galaxy (unnamed at the time) is said to have formed during the cosmic Dark Age (between 500 million and 1 billion years after the Big Bang) when no galaxies should have been giving off light."
No one uses photo plates anymore in professional astronomy -- certainly not at the mammoth, highly computerized telescopes where images like this are taken (Gemini, VLT, Keck, etc.). Charge coupled devices (CCDs) like those used in modern video cameras, digital cameras, web cams, etc. are what's used. Usually they're supercooled so as to mitigate emission in the IR region by the detector itself. They're also many times larger (several thousand pixels on a side) and consequently can cost up to $100k a unit. Of course, telescope time at one of these places costs a few ten thousands an hour.