Astronomers from McGill University in Canada and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru have used data from the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in Pune to detect a radio signal originating from atomic hydrogen in an extremely distant galaxy.

The findings have been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

"Due to the immense distance from the galaxy, the 21 cm emission line had redshifted to 48 cm by the time the signal travelled from the source to the telescope," said Chakraborty.

The signal detected by the team was emitted from this galaxy when the universe was only 4.9 billion years old; in other words, the look-back time for this source is 8.8 billion years.

This detection was made possible by a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, in which the light emitted by the source is bent due to the presence of another massive body, such as an early type elliptical galaxy, between the target galaxy and the observer, effectively resulting in the "magnification" of the signal.

The team also observed that the atomic hydrogen mass of this particular galaxy is almost twice as high as its stellar mass.

Yashwant Gupta, Center Director at NCRA, said, "Detecting neutral hydrogen in emission from the distant Universe is extremely challenging and has been one of the key science goals of GMRT. We are happy about this new path-breaking result with the GMRT, and hope that the same can be confirmed and improved upon in the future."

Image courtesy: ANI