Massive galaxies discovered in the early Universe

ESO’s VISTA survey telescope has spied a horde of previously hidden massive galaxies that existed when the Universe was in its infancy. By discovering and studying more of these galaxies than ever before, astronomers have for the first time found out exactly when such monster galaxies first appeared.

A few of the newly discovered massive galaxies are shown in close-up on these small subsets of the UltraVISTA field.