Astronomers with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico have announced the discovery of the most remote object in the known universe, a quasar with a red shift of 5.8. The 10-m W.M. Keck telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii measured the quasar's spectrum and confirmed that the light left it less than a billion years after the big bang. Researchers have identified objects with red shifts potentially greater than 6 but have not measured their spectra.

The survey, which digitally images the sky in five precise color bands, will observe more than 200 million deep-space objects over 10,000 square degrees. The project has revealed approximately 1000 quasars, highly luminous but compact objects thought to be powered by black holes of up to a billion solar masses.

Image courtesy of Stephen Kent, Sloan Digital Sky Survey Collaboration.