Exploding star is most distant object in universe

Scientists at the joint US-UK-Italian space observatory believe they have identified the most distant object yet detected in space. GRB 090429B, as the exploding star is known to its friends and admirers, is an astonishing 13.14bn light years away.

The star was spotted in April 2009, but details of its discovery are about to be published in Astrophysics Journal. In fact, it's even older news than that: the explosion happened, as its distance from earth suggests, 13.14bn years ago - just 520m years after the big bang.

Researcher Dr Antonino Cucchiara from the University of California told the BBC: "It would have been a huge star, perhaps 30 times the mass of our Sun."

He added: "We do not have enough information to claim this was one of the... very first generation of stars in the Universe. But certainly we are in the earliest phases of star formation."

Despite its extreme age, GRB 090429B is something of a flash in the pan. The 'GRB' in its designation stands for 'Gamma-Ray Burst' – an extremely quick flash of intensely bright light caused when its star exploded.

The Swift observatory is designed to look for exactly these fleeting glimpses of distant astronomical events – as its name suggests.
Launched in 2004, it has British engineering in its ultraviolet/optical telescope and carries a British X-ray camera.

UK researcher, and part of the Swift team, Dr Paul O'Brien of the University of Leicester told the BBC: "Because gamma-rays can get right through dust, this gives you a good, unbiased way of finding those first galaxies.

"It was all of these objects that grew up to form the Universe we see around us today. If you think in terms of a human lifespan, it's about understanding what the Universe was like as a toddler." ·