Posted: Fri, Jan 10, 2003, 7:29 AM ET (1229 GMT)
Astronomers released this week new images that offer the best glimpses yet of conditions in the early universe. In one study, astronomers used images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to locate the most distant quasar found to date: an object with a redshift of 6.4, corresponding to a distance of 13 billion light-years. The universe was only 800 million years old when the light observed left the quasar. Astronomers hope to use images of that and other quasars to characterize the evolution of these objects over time. In a separate study, another group of astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to discover young galaxies at a redshift of 6 that formed when the universe was no more than a billion years old. Astronomers believe that there may have been 400 million such galaxies at this phase of the universe's history.

Related Links:

•  SPACE.com article
•  NASA press release