Astronomers have just discovered a galaxy so ancient it possesses a family of stars that has existed since the dawn of time. Most of the earliest galaxies show little stellar activity but this one -- A1689-zD1 located on the edge of the universe -- is highly active and exudes massive amounts of dust. 

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This cosmic dust consists of carbon, oxygen, silicon and magnesium among many other elements not commonly observed in older galaxies. Infant galaxies, on the other hand, are devoid of these materials.

These elements originate from the cores of stars and they spread throughout space and become seeds that form new generations of stars. Astronomers believe galaxies have to go through seven generation of stars for cosmic dust to accumulate and build-up in large concentrations.

The cluster of galaxies called Abell 1689 apparently has a gravitational lens. This means that gravity from the group of stars bends light like a lens, acting like a telescope that magnifies the image of the galaxy more than nine times.

This ancient galaxy was imaged by the ALMA telescope (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) and the X-shooter instrument of the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile. The observations revealed a massive amount of cosmic dust shrouding this family of stars.

Light from distant objects in the cosmos take light years to reach Earth. Galaxy A1689-zD1 is so distant, however, that astronomers are seeing stars that existed when the Universe was just 700 million years old.

According to Darach Watson of the University of Copenhagen, the exact origin of the galactic dust is still obscure but findings indicate this production happened very rapidly, within 500 million years into the first star formations of the Universe. This is a short astronomical time frame as stars exist for billions of years.

This dust can also come from star bursts from a period of rapid stellar formation that was followed by a decline in stellar births. This ancient, dusty galaxy seemed to be in a hurry to form the first generations of stars to exist in the universe, according to Kirsten Knudsen from the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. ALMA should be able to detect more galaxies like this.

This study was published in the journal, Nature.

TagsALMA, VLT telescope, ESO, ancient old dusty galaxy early universe, Super Ancient and Dusty Galaxy Found When the Universe Was Just 700 Million Years Old