Galaxy near Big Dipper stripped of 'most distant object' status

LIVERMORE, Calif. (AP) - Astrophysicists stripped a galaxy near the Big Dipper of ''Most Distant Object Known'' status when it was discovered it was only 9.8 billion light years away instead of 12.5 billion light years.

With the estimated distance of 12.5 billion light years for STIS 123627+621755 no longer correct, the scientists said the new titleholder for the most distant object known belongs to a quasar, an active black hole 12.4 billion light years from Earth.

''At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory we have been at the forefront of distant galaxy searches for many years, and we realize that sometimes a difficult measurement may turn out to be in error,'' said astrophysicist Wil Van Breugel. ''We hope that our own record of a galaxy, which emits powerful radio waves at a distance of 12.3 billion light years, will stand the test of time.''

Van Breugel and fellow astrophysicist Wim De Vries, with colleagues from several universities and observatories, said they were able to determine that the initial distance estimate made by a team of State University of New York at Stony Brook astronomers was incorrect.

Their findings were published in Thursday's issue of Nature.

Stony Brook astronomer Hsiao-Wen Chen determined the 12.5 billion light year distance using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Van Breugel and De Vries said they discovered the error using the W.M. Keck Observatory's 10-meter telescope - the world's largest - in Hawaii earlier this year.

The Lawrence Livermore team has reclassified STIS 123627+621755 as a small dwarf galaxy, similar to Earth's neighboring Magellanic Clouds visible from the Southern Hemisphere.