Sky Prospecting: Surveying the universe’s middle-aged galaxies

With a year’s worth of data now in hand from a telescope survey of thousands of galaxies 6 to 8 billion light-years away, astronomers are filling in details about the midlife years of the nearly 14-billion-year-old universe.

“We’re looking back in time,” says Alison Coil of the University of California, Berkeley. “The light we’re seeing traveled for [at least] 6 billion years before it reached our telescope.”