EMBARGOED UNTIL: 12:00 pm (EST)/18:00 (CET) Feburary 15, 2004

CONTACT:
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
(Phone: 410-338-4514; E-mail: )

Robert Tindol
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA
(Phone: 626-395-3631; E-mail: )

Laura Kraft
W. M. Keck Observatory/CARA, Kamuela, HI
(Phone: 808-885-7887; E-mail: )

Lars Lindberg Christensen
Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre, Garching, Germany
(Phone: +49-89-320-06-306; Cellular +49-173-38-72-621,
E-mail: )

PRESS RELEASE NO.: STScI-PR04-08


HUBBLE AND KECK TEAM UP TO FIND FARTHEST KNOWN GALAXY IN UNIVERSE

An international team of astronomers may have set a new record in
discovering what is the most distant known galaxy in the universe.
Located an estimated 13 billion light-years away, the object is being
viewed at a time only 750 million years after the big bang, when the
universe was barely 5 percent of its current age.

The primeval galaxy was identified by combining the power of NASA's
Hubble Space Telescope and CARA's W. M. Keck Telescopes on Mauna Kea in
Hawaii. These great observatories got a boost from the added
magnification of a natural "cosmic gravitational lens" in space that
further amplifies the brightness of the distant object.

The Caltech team reporting on the discovery consists of Drs. Jean-Paul
Kneib, Richard S. Ellis, Michael R. Santos and Johan Richard. Drs. Kneib
and Richard also serve the Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees of Toulouse,
France. Dr. Santos also represents the Institute of Astronomy,
Cambridge, UK.

To see and read more, please visit:
http://hubblesite.org/news/2004/08 and
http://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/news/news.html
http://spacetelescope.org
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/releases/

For additional information, please contact:

Dr. Jean-Paul Kneib
Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, France/Caltech, United States
(Phone: 626-395-5928; E-mail: )

Dr. Richard Ellis
Caltech, Pasadena, CA
(Phone: 626-395-2598; Cellular: 626-676-5530; E-mail )

The W. M. Keck Observatory is managed by the California Association for
Research in Astronomy (CARA), a scientific partnership among the
California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the University of
California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA). The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is operated by the
Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA), for
NASA, under contract with the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt,
MD. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation
between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).