A team of scientists from India, Switzerland, France, the US, Japan and the Netherlands have have found some vital information regarding the formation of the first galaxy and the end of the cosmic dark age, reported Indian Express. The team worked under the lead of Dr Kanak Saha, an Associate Professor at IUCAA, Pune.

The research paper, published in the journal ‘Nature Astronomy’, states that evidence of extreme ultraviolet light from the galaxy, which is almost 9.3 billion years away, was found by Indian telescope AstroSat.

According to PTI, the high ultraviolet light radiations can easily ionise the hydrogen atom by liberating its electron form the nucleus while extreme UV photons emitted by such galaxies could have reionised the early universe, leading to the emission of first light in the universe. 

In a statement, IUCAA said that it hopes the latest development could lead to further information about the end of dark age and formation of light in the universe.

The new found Galaxy, named ‘AUDFs01’, is touted to be located in Hubble eXtreme Deep field (XDF). reported The Print. According to the report, XDF is the formation of pictures of galaxies captured by the Hubble telescope over the span of recent decades and is expected to contain 5,500 galaxies which may be as old as 13.2 billion years or 13.7 billion years when the universe was formed. 

AstroSat, the Indian space-based multi-wavelength telescope which found the evidence, comprises five X-rays and five UV-rays telescopes that monitor the emission of such rays from the space. Earth-based telescopes fail to do the same as those rays get absorbed in Earth’s atmosphere. AstroSat also has an ultraviolet imaging telescope (UVIT) which can image far and near UV light radiation through which this Galaxy has been discovered.

The discovery has led to lauds for the team of scientists under the lead of Dr Kanak Saha from the international scientists’ community, since the most powerful Hubble Space telescope has not yet been able to detect such amount of extreme ultraviolet rays while AstroSat’s UVIT, on the basis of noise detection tool, was able to detect such astronomical phenomenon.