Context:
- Astronomers have used an Indian telescope to discover the most distant radio galaxy ever known, located at a distance of 12 billion light-years
- The galaxy is from a time when the universe was only 7% of its current age
- The galaxy is perceived as it looked when the universe was only a billion years old
- It was found using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in Pune
About Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope
- GMRT is an array of thirty fully steerable parabolic radio telescopes of 45-metre diameter
- It is operated by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics
About Radio galaxies
- Radio galaxies are very rare objects in the universe
- They are colossal galaxies with a supermassive black hole in their centre that actively accretes gas and dust from its surroundings
- This activity initiates the launch of high-energy jet streams, which are capable of accelerating charged particles around the supermassive black hole to almost the speed of light
- The discovery of such galaxies at extremely large distances is important for our understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies.
Source:TH
