Scientists at the Japanese National Astronomical Observatory in collaboration with colleagues at the British Imperial College and with the help of several powerful telescopes have discovered the oldest galactic cluster, reports BTA.

The protocluster, called the z660D, a "constellation" of 12 gravity-related galaxies, formed about 13 billion years ago, when the universe was barely 800,000 million years old. 

“A protocluster is a rare and special system with an extremely high density, and not easy to find. To overcome this problem, we used the wide field of view of the Subaru Telescope to map a large area of the sky and look for protoclusters.”, says Yuichi Harikane of the research team.

The discovery made with the help of Subaru, Keck and Gemini telescopes can contribute to a better understanding of the origin of the universe. One of the proto-galaxies in the Protostrup is Himiko.

The giant gas cloud - one of the largest objects in the early universe - was discovered in 2009 thanks to the Subaru telescope. Scientists are surprised that such a massive object does not occupy a central place in protocluster, but is located on its outskirts 500 million light years from the center.

“It is still not understood why Himiko is not located in the center. These results will be a key for understanding the relationship between clusters and massive galaxies.”, Masami Ouchi, a team member at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and the University of Tokyo, who discovered Himiko in 2009 said, quoted by SciTechDaily.