COBE again
Six years after COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) gave us the detailed spectrum of the cosmic microwave background, it has detected the faint infrared radiation emitted by the most ancient of the galaxies. The galaxies themselves are too far away and faint to be observed, but the dust surrounding them gives a glow of radiation in the far infrared region. Jean-Loup Puget and his team have analysed the data and after subtracting out the known sources of radiation, have found a signal which extends from 200 to 1,000 nanometres in the far infrared region. The signal is consistent with the emission from the early galaxies ( Science , Vol 272, No 5264).