[8][note 1] Data published in 2024 established that the galaxy contains the most distant, and therefore earliest, black hole known in the universe,[9][10] estimated at around 1.6 million solar masses.

[11] The object's name is derived from its location in the GOODS-North field of galaxies and its high cosmological redshift number (GN + z11).

[clarification needed] The galaxy was identified by a team studying data from the Hubble Space Telescope's Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS) and Spitzer Space Telescope's Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey-North (GOODS-North).

[20] The findings, which were announced in March 2016, revealed the galaxy to be farther away than originally thought, at the distance limit of what the Hubble Telescope can observe.

GN-z11 is around 150 million years older than the previous record-holder EGSY8p7,[12] and is observed (shortly after but) "very close to the end of the so-called Dark Ages of the universe",[20] and (during but) "near the very beginning" of the reionization era.