Astronomers have found an old and distant galaxy that is believed to date back to a time when the universe was just 650 million years old, a fraction of its current age of 13.8 billion years.
The galaxy, known as Abell 2744_Y1, is about 30 times smaller than the Milky Way, but is pumping out stars at a prodigious rate.
It is the first distant galaxy to be found during a new Hubble space telescope project that makes use of naturally occurring zoom lenses in space.
Another galaxy discovered in 2012 dates back to just 500 million years after the birth of the universe.
"The cluster of galaxies act as additional lens and can convert the mirror of the Hubble Space telescope to a mirror at least 10 times larger," wrote astronomer Nicolas Laporte, with the Astrophysics Institute of the Canary Islands.
The technique, known as "gravitational lensing" has been used before to ferret out distant galaxies. But the new initiative not only taps the resolving power of Hubble, but combines its images with observations by sister telescopes that detect infrared and X-ray light.
With the right alignment, astronomers hope the cosmic lenses will reveal galaxies that formed as early as 300 million years after the Big Bang, Laporte added.
The research will be published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters.
