Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have detected the magnetic field of a galaxy so far away that its light has taken more than 11 billion years to reach us. The result provides astronomers with vital clues about how the magnetic fields of galaxies like our own Milky Way came to be. Read ALMA´s press release here.
Image: © ESO/J. Geach et al.; This infrared image shows the distant galaxy 9io9, seen here as a reddish arc curved around a bright nearby galaxy. This nearby galaxy acts as a gravitational lens: its mass curves spacetime around it, bending lightrays coming from 9io9 in the background, hence its distorted shape. This colour view results from combining infrared images taken with ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) in Chile and the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) in the US.