Nasa captures a lonely galaxy

[karl]

The galaxy is so far away - the ray of light journeyed for 13.2 billion years to get bring us this image - that by rights, we should not be able to see it.
But thanks to a universe-wide trick of the light, we have been able to glimpse back at a galaxy so far, far away, and from such a long, long time ago, that its light shone out when the universe was just 500 million years old - and still shrouded in blackness.
Nasa's Hubble satellite should not have been able to see it.
But as the galaxy passed behind a giant cluster of galaxies, the cluster acted like a giant lens magnifying the light by 15 times - and bringing us this tiny glimpse of the universe in its earliest years.
The image was released today - just as the finishing touches are put on to the mirrors of the James Webb Space Telescope, which will launch later this decade to bring back even more distant images.


See the photos and story here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2206713/Nasa-captures-lonely-galaxy-dark-ages-universe-13-2billion-years-ago--thanks-extraordinary-trick-lens.html#ixzz278fEKFsF

[Cognizant]

Astronomy is just one of those things that is so mind boggling, so interesting, so large, that it's almost incomprehensible. It's so cool to me that we can see BILLIONS of years into the past; to the beginning of our universe.