Several years ago, scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of an infant galaxy as it appeared 13.4 billion years ago. How did they achieve this head-spinning look so far back in time? The light they measured to create the photo was emitted by the galaxy, named GN-z11, just 400 million years after the universe began and has taken this long to reach Hubble in orbit around Earth. Video explanation above.
"It's amazing that a galaxy so massive existed only 200 million to 300 million years after the very first stars started to form. It takes really fast growth, producing stars at a huge rate, to have formed a galaxy that is a billion solar masses so soon," explained investigator Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz, at the time of the 2016 discovery.
More from NASA in this video: