Scheduled for launch in the year 2007, the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) will be used to take infrared spectra of candidate galaxies to confirm their distances, and its higher resolution will help reveal the shapes of these early objects. They discovered almost 800 Cepheid variable stars, a special class of pulsating star used for accurate distance measurement. Combining the Hubble constant measurement with estimates for the density of the universe, the team determined that the universe is approximately 12 billion years old - similar to the oldest stars. About 10 to 20 of the farthest clusters in the Hubble survey may be over seven billion light years away, which means that the clusters, and their populations of tens or perhaps hundreds of galaxies each, were fully assembled early in the history of the universe. and international institutions. If ground-based telescopes confirm the distances and masses of the clusters, the survey may hold clues to how galaxies quic ... Read more »