GN-z11

GN-z11 is a high-redshift galaxy found in the constellation Ursa Major. It is among the farthest known galaxies from Earth ever discovered. The 2015 discovery was published in a 2016 paper headed by Pascal Oesch and Gabriel Brammer (Cosmic Dawn Center). Up until the discovery of JADES-GS-z13-0 in 2022 by the James Webb Space Telescope, GN-z11 was the oldest and most distant known galaxy yet identified in the observable universe, having a spectroscopic redshift of z = 10.957, which corresponds to a proper distance of approximately 32 billion light-years (9.8 billion parsecs). Data published in 2024 established that the galaxy contains the most distant, and therefore earliest, black hole known in the universe, estimated at around 1.6 million solar masses.

The object's name is derived from its location in the GOODS-North field of galaxies and its high cosmological redshift number (GN + z11). It is observed as it existed 13.4 billion years ago, just 400 million years after the Big Bang; as a result, its distance is sometimes inappropriately reported as 13.4 billion light-years, its light-travel distance measurement.

In early 2023, James Webb Space Telescope observed the galaxy and reported a definitive redshift of Z=10.6034 ± 0.0013.

The galaxy has such a high redshift that its angular diameter distance is actually less than that of some galaxies with lower redshift. This means that the ratio of its angular size to its size in light-years is greater.