Artist’s impression of the quasar that astronomers used to search for early galaxies
ESO/M. Kornmesser
One of the largest quasars in the early universe has helped to reveal a vast “protocluster” of nascent galaxies that is expected to grow more massive than any galaxy cluster we know of.
Protoclusters are the primordial beginnings of the galaxy clusters we see in our region of the universe, before they are bound together by gravity. Astronomers usually look for them by casting their telescopes over wide swathes of space, hoping to find regions with…