Looking back 13.2 billion years into the universe (pictures)

by CNET News.com  |  September 25, 2012, 5:00pm PDT  |  Image 3 of 4

The galaxies in the XDF are not close together ? this image separates out the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field by the distances of objects within it.

The most distant objects within the XDF are more than 95% of the way back to the Big Bang, while a few stars in it are within the Milky Way - 13.2 billion years ago.

In the left pane are the closest objects - whose light has taken less than 5 billion years to reach us. In the center pane are objects whose light has taken 5 to 9 billion years to reach us, and in the right pane are objects whose light has taken more than 9 billion years to reach us, with the furthest of those having existed just 450 million years after the Universe?s birth in the Big Bang.

Image 3 of 4

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