When we look into the far distance, we see back in time. Light from these distant galaxies has taken billions of years to reach Earth. Light from the most distant galaxies began travelling towards Earth when the universe was very young. These galaxy images, extracted from Hubble Space Telescope photographs, are arranged in order of the age the universe was when their light left for Earth. The sequence begins with a small clump of stars in the one billion year old universe and ends with a disk galaxy in the 11 billion year old universe. The Universe is now 13.7 billion years old.

Video Credit: NASA and G. Bacon (STScI). Source: HubbleSite GOODS page