<p> Astronomers have observed the most luminous galaxies ever seen in the universe - objects so bright that the researchers have taken to calling them 'outrageously luminous'.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Researchers at University of Massachusetts Amherst in the US said that established descriptors such as "ultra- and hyper-luminous" used to describe previously brightest known galaxies do not even come close to describing the newly discovered objects.<br /><br />"We've taken to calling them 'outrageously luminous' among ourselves, because there is no scientific term to apply," said undergraduate student Kevin Harrington, study's lead author.<br /><br />Researchers used the 50-metre diameter Large Millimetre Telescope (LMT), the largest, most sensitive single-aperture instrument in the world for studying star formation.<br /><br />It is located on the summit of Sierra Negra, a 15,000-foot extinct volcano in the central state of Puebla, a companion peak to Mexico's highest mountain.<br /><br />Researchers also used the latest generation of satellite telescope and a cosmology experiment on the NASA/ESA collaboration Planck satellite that detects the glow of the 'Big Bang' and microwave background for this work.<br /><br />They estimate that the newly observed galaxies they identified are about 10 billion years old and were formed only about 4 billion years after the Big Bang.<br /><br />Harrington said that in categorising luminous sources, astronomers call an infrared galaxy "ultra-luminous" when it has a rating of about 1 trillion solar luminosities, and that rises to about 10 trillion solar luminosities at the "hyper-luminous" level.<br /><br />Beyond that, for the 100 trillion solar luminosities range of the new objects, "we don't even have a name," he said.<br /><br />"The galaxies we found were not predicted by theory to exist; they're too big and too bright, so no one really looked for them before," said Professor Min Yun from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.<br /><br />The newly observed galaxies are not as large as they appear, the researchers said.<br />Follow-up studies suggest that their extreme brightness arises from a phenomenon called gravitational lensing that magnifies light passing near massive objects, as predicted by Einstein's general relativity.<br /><br />As a result, from Earth they look about 10 times brighter than they really are.<br />Gravitational lensing of a distant galaxy by another galaxy is quite rare, said Yun, so finding as many as eight potential lensed objects as part of this research "is another potentially important discovery."<br /><br />The research was published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. <br /></p>
<p> Astronomers have observed the most luminous galaxies ever seen in the universe - objects so bright that the researchers have taken to calling them 'outrageously luminous'.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Researchers at University of Massachusetts Amherst in the US said that established descriptors such as "ultra- and hyper-luminous" used to describe previously brightest known galaxies do not even come close to describing the newly discovered objects.<br /><br />"We've taken to calling them 'outrageously luminous' among ourselves, because there is no scientific term to apply," said undergraduate student Kevin Harrington, study's lead author.<br /><br />Researchers used the 50-metre diameter Large Millimetre Telescope (LMT), the largest, most sensitive single-aperture instrument in the world for studying star formation.<br /><br />It is located on the summit of Sierra Negra, a 15,000-foot extinct volcano in the central state of Puebla, a companion peak to Mexico's highest mountain.<br /><br />Researchers also used the latest generation of satellite telescope and a cosmology experiment on the NASA/ESA collaboration Planck satellite that detects the glow of the 'Big Bang' and microwave background for this work.<br /><br />They estimate that the newly observed galaxies they identified are about 10 billion years old and were formed only about 4 billion years after the Big Bang.<br /><br />Harrington said that in categorising luminous sources, astronomers call an infrared galaxy "ultra-luminous" when it has a rating of about 1 trillion solar luminosities, and that rises to about 10 trillion solar luminosities at the "hyper-luminous" level.<br /><br />Beyond that, for the 100 trillion solar luminosities range of the new objects, "we don't even have a name," he said.<br /><br />"The galaxies we found were not predicted by theory to exist; they're too big and too bright, so no one really looked for them before," said Professor Min Yun from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.<br /><br />The newly observed galaxies are not as large as they appear, the researchers said.<br />Follow-up studies suggest that their extreme brightness arises from a phenomenon called gravitational lensing that magnifies light passing near massive objects, as predicted by Einstein's general relativity.<br /><br />As a result, from Earth they look about 10 times brighter than they really are.<br />Gravitational lensing of a distant galaxy by another galaxy is quite rare, said Yun, so finding as many as eight potential lensed objects as part of this research "is another potentially important discovery."<br /><br />The research was published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. <br /></p>