Journal
NATURE
Volume 557, Issue 7705, Pages 392-+Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0117-z
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Funding
- NAOJ ALMA Scientific Research [2016-01 A]
- European Research Council Advanced [FP7/669253, 339177]
- KAKENHI [26287034, 17H01114, 17H06130, 17H04831, 16H01085, 16H02166, 15K17616, 17K14252, JP17H01111, 16J03329, 15H02064]
- grant CONICYT-Chile Basal-CATA [PFB-06/2007]
- FONDECYT Regular [1141218]
- NAOJ Visiting Fellow Program
- NASA
- Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA [NAS 5-26555]
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [16H01085, 15H02064, 16J03329] Funding Source: KAKEN
- European Research Council (ERC) [339177] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
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A fundamental quest of modern astronomy is to locate the earliest galaxies and study how they influenced the intergalactic medium a few hundred million years after the Big Bang(1-3). The abundance of star-forming galaxies is known to decline(4,5) from redshifts of about 6 to 10, but a key question is the extent of star formation at even earlier times, corresponding to the period when the first galaxies might have emerged. Here we report spectroscopic observations of MACS1149-JD1(6), a gravitationally lensed galaxy observed when the Universe was less than four per cent of its present age. We detect an emission line of doubly ionized oxygen at a redshift of 9.1096 +/- 0.0006, with an uncertainty of one standard deviation. This precisely determined redshift indicates that the red rest-frame optical colour arises from a dominant stellar component that formed about 250 million years after the Big Bang, corresponding to a redshift of about 15. Our results indicate that it may be possible to detect such early episodes of star formation in similar galaxies with future telescopes.
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