paper - <a href="http://arxiv.org/pdf/1211.3663v1.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://arxiv.org/pdf/1211.3663v1.pdf</a> (the link and redshift, 10.8, are just under the image).<p>it's a photometric redshift derived from the lyman break. rest-frame ultra-violet emission less than 912 A is "completely" absorbed by intervening neutral hydrogen, and between 912 and 1216 A partially, in lines. so objects are dark at shorter wavelengths than 1216 A (in the frame of the galaxy). their observations show that in our frame there's no emission short of 1.46 um (infra-red). and 1.46e-6 / 1216e-10 ~ 12 = 1+z, so redshift is approx 11.<p>if it's correct (photometric redshifts are not as reliable as those obtained from spectra, but are technically easier to achieve, and this is really pushing the limits of what is possible - my partner, who is still in astronomy, is sceptical that this is real), then it's the most distant object known.<p>i guess the above isn't very clear. i'll try again. hydrogen gas just floating around in space absorbs ultra-violet (UV) light. so you don't see much UV from galaxies.<p>now distant galaxies are redshifted so much (by expansion of the universe) that the UV ends up in the infra-red (IR). so what you observe are things that are only visible in the IR - everything shorter (optical and UV) in our frame was absorbed (UV) in the galaxy's frame.<p>so one way to find extremely distance objects is to find things that can only be seen in the IR. what you're actually seeing is the redshifted optical; what you don't see in the optical is what, in the galaxy's frame, is absorbed UV.<p>but these galaxies are very faint, so they are hard to detect. using a gravitational lens boosts the brightness and so makes this technique more powerful.<p>i'm not sure that helps (a diagram would make things much clearer). the technique, well, the resulting objects, are called "lyman break galaxies". but i haven't found a good reference googling.