a baby is born!

(A composite image of the distant galaxy HUDF-JD2)

starry starry night.............

'Big baby' galaxy detected in early universe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- 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 young galaxy was found by researchers using NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes who looked back in time to a point some 800 million years after the Big Bang explosion that many scientists believe gave birth to the universe.
The discovery of this massive, well-developed galaxy at such an early point in time means astronomers may have to adjust their ideas on when galaxies and other cosmic objects can form, said Massimo Stiavelli of the Space Telescope Science Institute, which deals with Hubble's findings................