. . . Than can almost be imagined! Reuters reports:

Astronomers using two of NASA’s most powerful telescopes said on Tuesday they have detected a “big baby” galaxy, vastly heavy for its young age and its location in the early universe.

The discovery was surprising, since astronomers have long theorized that galaxies form when stars gradually cluster together, with small galaxies preceding bigger galaxies.

But the stars in this cosmic infant — less than 1 billion years old — have eight times the mass of those in the 13-billion-year-old Milky Way, which contains Earth.

The Hubble telescope has contributed much to man’s knowledge of the physical universe. Its data will be studied and argued over long after it no longer functions.

The Spitzer telescope, which is sensitive to the light from older, redder stars, found the baby galaxy to be unexpectedly bright in infrared light, suggesting a very massive object, especially for its early era.

“This would be quite a big galaxy even today,” said Mark Dickinson of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory and lead scientist for the Spitzer results. “At a time when the universe was only 800 million years old, it’s positively gigantic,” Dickinson said in a statement.

Something HUGH, something BRIGHT, so near the BEGINNING of the universe . . . heh! (db)

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