Why do the astronomers consider the discovery so significant?
“When we received the Hubble image, we immediately knew that we had found something special”, says Marijn Franx. “We were excited by the possibility that we may have found a unique example of a galaxy in formation at the time of the earliest quasars”. “We are fascinated to be witnessing the very early stages of the construction of what could well become a massive galaxy like our own Milky Way”, says Garth Illingworth of University of California, Santa Cruz. “This object is a pathfinder for deciphering what is happening in young galaxies, and offers a rare glimpse of the powerful events that transpired during the formation of galaxies”.
