A candidate redshift z ~ 10 galaxy and rapid changes in that population at an age of 500 Myr

Understand

Searches for very-high-redshift galaxies over the past decade have yielded a large sample of more than 6,000 galaxies existing just 900-2,000 million years (Myr) after the Big Bang (redshifts 6 > z > 3; ref.

• 1).
• The Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF09) data have yielded the first reliable detections of z ~ 8 galaxies that, together with reports of a gamma-ray burst at z ~ 8.2 (refs 10, 11), constitute the earliest objects reliably reported to date.
• Observations of z ~ 7-8 galaxies suggest substantial star formation at z > 9-10.