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According to Johan Richard, the lead author of a new study, a distant galaxy has been discovered that began forming stars just 200 million years after the Big Bang. This challenges existing theories of how soon galaxies started forming and evolved in the initial years of the Universe. It could even resolve the mystery of how the hydrogen fog that occupied the early universe was cleared. Richard's team found the galaxy in recent observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and confirmed it with observations from the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope. They measured its distance using the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The galaxy is seeable through a flock of galaxies called Abell 383. Its powerful gravity changes the position of light rays almost like a magnifying glass. The chance alignment of the galaxy, the cluster and the Earth amplifies the light coming to us from this distant galaxy and enables astronomers to make detailed observations. Without this gravitational lens, it would not have been possible to observe this galaxy even with today's largest telescopes. After spotting the galaxy in Hubble and Spitzer images, the team carried out spectroscopic observations with the Keck II telescope in Hawaii. By closely examining the spectrum, the team could make detailed measurements of its redshift and infer information about the properties of its component stars. The redshift indicates that the galaxy, as we view it today, is as it was when the universe was less than a billion years old. We have, indeed detected galaxies that are much older. Yet, the distinctive features of the newly discovered galaxy place it at a different pedestal altogether from the others detected with stars that are rather young.