NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer have been ridiculously successful at spotting distant objects, but some galaxies are too faint to spot directly. Thanks to gravitational lensing, the space telescopes have found the dimmest object ever from the early universe — a galaxy that existed 13.4 billion years ago, or a mere 400 million years after the big bang. Dubbed “Tayna,” or new-born, the object belongs to a new class of faint, newly formed galaxies that have evaded detection until now. It’s roughly the size of the Magellanic Cloud near our own Milky Way galaxy, but makes new stars at around ten times the rate.
Source: NASA/JPL