Portuguese researchers in the front row to study the childhood of the Universe.

Old galaxies seen by the Hubble Space Telescope

Old galaxies seen by the Hubble Space Telescope in the near-infrared. The forth-coming ELT will enable the study of the formation and evolution of the first galaxies in the Universe. Credits: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (UCO/Lick Observatory and the University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (UCO/Lick Observatory and Leiden University) and the HUDF09 Team

The Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA) is one of the associated institutions of the MOSAIC project, the future instrument that will take the scientific community closer to the first ages of the Universe. MOSAIC, a multi-object spectrograph, will be one of the instruments to be installed at what will become the largest telescope in the world in the visible and infrared light, the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), expected to start operations in 2024.

The ELT will enable the observation of the deep Universe and make possible to look into the past, to the first galaxies, that were formed 12 billion years ago. MOSAIC will be a fundamental instrument to understand how the first galaxies were formed and how they gradually merged into larger ones, like our own Milky Way.

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