Pune scientists discover a far away galaxy

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In perhaps one of the biggest landmark achievements in space missions, scientists from Pune’s Inter-University Centre for Astronomy & Astrophysics (IUCAA) discovered one of the farthest galaxies in the universe. Union Minister of State Department of Space Shri Jitendra Singh made the announcement that the galaxy named AUDFs01 was discovered by a team of astronomers led by IUCAA's Kanak Saha.

The galaxy was discovered by India’s first multi-wavelength space observatory, ‘AstroSat’ which detected extreme-UV light from a galaxy which is 9.30 billion light years from earth. The achievement comes close on the heels of two IIT-Bombay students discovering a SUV-sized asteroid that zoomed past earth’s surface at around 2,900 kilometres last month.

Leading British journal, “Nature Astronomy” reported about this discovery.  India's AstroSat/UVIT was able to decipher this as the background noise in the UVIT detector is lesser than one on the Hubble Space Telescope of US-based NASA.

Union minister Jitendra Singh lauded the efforts of the scientists of IUCAA and said that India’s capability in space technology has risen to a new level and our scientists are offering leads to space scientists from other parts of the world.

Speaking to media IUCAA Director Somak Ray Chaudhury said: "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."

AstroSat, which made this discovery, was launched by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in the year 2015. It was developed by a team led by Shyam Tandon, Ex Emeritus Professor, IUCAA with the full support of ISRO.

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