MAUNA KEA, Hawaii, Feb. 16 (UPI) -- Astronomers in Hawaii may have found the most distant galaxy in the universe with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope.
The new galaxy, believed to be 13 billion light-years away, was detected in a long exposure of Abell 2218, a nearby cluster of galaxies, taken with a camera on board NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
The near cluster's gravitational field is so strong it amplifies light from distant sources, the astronomers explained.
"We are looking at the first evidence of our ancestors on the evolutionary tree of the entire universe," said Frederic Chaffee, director of the W. M. Keck Observatory at Mauna Kea in Hawaii, which was used to confirm the findings.
The astronomers said they plan to look for more evidence of similar young galaxies that mark the end of astronomy's Dark Ages, a time following the Big Bang but before star systems formed.
