10 billion years ago. The galaxy, therefore...

This image provided by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Tuesday Oct. 16, 2007 shows the galaxy Zwicky 18. NASAs Hubble Space Telescope has found the galaxy is the equivalent of the painting of Dorian Gray, a portrait in an Oscar Wilde novel that appears mysteriously to age. Like the fictional painting, the galaxy I Zwicky 18 appears to look older the more astronomers study it. New Hubble data have quashed that possibility. The telescope found faint older stars contained within the galaxy, suggesting its star formation started at least one billion years ago and possibly as much as 10 billion years ago. The galaxy, therefore, may have formed at the same time as most other galaxies. Although the galaxy is not as youthful as was once believed, it is certainly developmentally challenged and unique in the nearby universe, said astronomer Alessandra Aloisi from the Space Telescope Science Institute and the European Space Agency in Baltimore, Md., who led the new study