The darkest sky in peninsular Italy allowed for a record-breaking astronomical observation: telescopes from the Virtual Telescope Project, installed in Manciano, in the province of Grosseto, managed to capture the most distant quasar observable at visible light wavelengths. Never before has a 350-millimeter aperture telescope gone so far in space and time, spotting an object 12.9 billion light-years distant, meaning that when its light left to reach us, the universe was less than 900 million years old, compared with a current estimated age of 13.7 billion years. The result, obtained thanks to observations made in recent weeks, was also made possible by the extraordinary quality of Manciano's night sky, which features the starriest and most light-pollution-free sky in all of peninsular Italy.
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