Astronomers have spotted the faint glow of what they believe to be the very first stars created in the universe.
They used Nasa’s Spitzer space telescope to discover the earliest objects that formed after the Big Bang.
They are so far away that the light from the stars has taken more that 13 BILLION YEARS to reach us – and the stars themselves no longer exist.
Scientists say the light is from giant stars that burned brilliantly or hot gas falling into the very first black holes.
The astronomers pointed the telescope at the constellation of Draco the dragon and had to open their “camera shutter” for TEN HOURS to record the faint starlight.
Their leader, Dr Alexander Kashlinsky, from Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Centre at Greenbelt, Maryland, said it was like seeing the glow of a distant city at night from an aircraft.
He added: “These were the first objects to form in the universe. The stars disappeared eons ago, yet their light is still travelling across the universe.”
Scientists say the first stars were more than a hundred times more
massive than the sun and extremely hot and bright – but they burned for only a few million years.