As early as 10 Gyr ago , galaxies with more than 10 ^ { 11 } M _ { \odot } in stars already existed .
While most of these massive galaxies must have subsequently transformed through on-going star formation and mergers with other galaxies , a small fraction ( \lesssim 0.1 % ) may have survived untouched till today .
Searches for such relic galaxies , useful windows to explore the early Universe , have been inconclusive to date : galaxies with masses and sizes like those observed at high redshift ( M _ { \star } \gtrsim 10 ^ { 11 } M _ { \odot } ; R _ { e } \lesssim 1.5 kpc ) have been found in the local Universe , but their stars are far too young for the galaxy to be a relic galaxy .
This paper explores the first case of a nearby galaxy , NGC1277 ( at a distance of 73 Mpc in the Perseus galaxy cluster ) , which fulfills many criteria to be considered a relic galaxy .
Using deep optical spectroscopy , we derive the star formation history along the structure of the galaxy : the stellar populations are uniformly old ( > 10 Gyr ) with no evidence for more recent star formation episodes .
The metallicity of their stars is super-solar ( [ Fe/H ] =0.20 \pm 0.04 with a smooth decline towards the outer regions ) and alpha enriched ( [ \alpha /Fe ] =0.4 \pm 0.1 ) .
This suggests a very short formation time scale for the bulk of stars of this galaxy .
This object also rotates very fast ( V _ { rot } \sim 300 km/s ) and has a large central velocity dispersion ( \sigma > 300 km/s ) .
NGC1277 allows the explorations in full detail of properties such as the structure , internal dynamics , metallicity and initial mass function at \sim 10-12 Gyr back in time when the first massive galaxies were built .