Record-Breaking Galaxy Cluster Found

The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers are reporting that they have detected the most distant cluster of galaxies ever seen: a mind-smashing 9.6 billion light years away, 400 million light years more distant than the previous record holder. The cluster, handily named SXDF-XCLJ0218-0510, was seen in infrared images by the giant Subaru telescope, and confirmed with spectroscopy and the X-ray detection of million-degree gas (a smoking gun of clusters). Every time astronomers push back the record for clusters, they learn more about the early conditions of the universe, so this cluster will provide insight into how the universe itself changed over the first few billion years after the Big Bang."

Comments

Re: How is this distance measured?

[Black Parrot]

How far apart do your measuring points need to be to accurately triangulate the position of something 9.6 billion light years away?

It's probably measured by its red shift. The red shift can be calibrated by standard candles such as Cephid variables. The nearest of those are calibrated by parallax, or "triangulation" as you call it.

Wikipedia has an article on the extragalactic distance scale, which may interest you.