( CNN ) -- Scientists say they 've found a galaxy that 's not just far , far , away -- it 's the most distant from our own that 's been discovered yet . And it 's helping them gain insight about the universe as it existed a long time ago . Astronomers say the galaxy , called z8_GND_5296 , is the most remote one they can confirm with spectroscopy , a technique that looks for the chemical signatures of elements . In this case , that element was hydrogen , the main fuel of stars . Researchers reported their findings in the journal Nature . z8_GND_5296 -- no , that 's not a typo , or a spam username -- is a window into the past . Because of its distance , it shows what things would have been like 700 million years after the Big Bang . The universe is 13.8 billion years old , so 700 million years after the start is actually quite early by comparison . Star formation . Besides breaking the distance record , astronomers find the new galaxy exciting because it appears to produce stars at an unusually high rate , said lead study author Steven Finkelstein , assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin . Star-formation rate is measured by how much raw hydrogen the galaxy converts into new stars every year . The z8_GND_5296 galaxy converts hydrogen in the amount of 300 times the mass of our sun into new stars each year . By contrast , the Milky Way only produces stars at one or two solar masses per year . Scientists established through previous research that in the first billion years of the universe 's history , typical rate of star formation went up , Finkelstein said . Galaxies formed more and more stars over time until about 10 billion years ago , when star formation rates began to decrease . The newly-confirmed galaxy is still unusual in its high star-formation rate , given how far away it is . But one of the previous record holders for `` most distant galaxy '' was making stars at 100 solar masses per year , which is in the same ballpark , meaning z8_GND_5296 is not a total fluke in its prolific star-making . `` Now it 's much less likely that we just stumbled upon a very rare phenomenon , and much more likely that the early universe harbors these sites of intense star formation , many more than we had previously thought possible , '' Finkelstein said . Shifting to red . All of the visible and ultraviolet light from the z8_GND_5296 galaxy has been shifted into the infrared spectrum by the time it reaches Earth . That 's because the universe itself is expanding , and the stretching of space-time makes light waves stretch as well . This phenomenon , called `` red shift , '' is similar to the Doppler effect of sound -- for instance , the pitch of a police-car siren sounds higher when it 's getting closer to you and lower as it moves away because the car is moving . The movement causes changes in the wavelength and frequency of sound waves that the observer receives . Astronomers can calculate the distance of a star , galaxy or other celestial object by examining how much light from it has been shifted into the infrared . This requires sophisticated techniques to make the calculations . In the Nature study , researchers used the MOSFIRE infrared camera at the W.M . Keck Observatory in Hawaii to study 43 galaxy candidates that had been found in a Hubble Space Telescope exploration of the sky : the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey ( CANDELS ) . Astronomers were looking for a special radiation signature from hydrogen called the Lyman-alpha emission line . This radiation represents the particular wavelength of light that gets emitted when hydrogen atoms get excited in a particular way . Researchers were able to detect this emission line coming from z8_GND_5296 , but not from any of the other 42 candidates . What about those other candidates ? Finkelstein theorizes that there is just a lot of gas that absorbs the hydrogen emissions , which is why we ca n't detect them on Earth . That may mean that `` galaxies at early epochs accrete gas at high rates , and that the resulting large amounts of gas extinguish most of the Lyman-alpha radiation in these young galaxies , '' Dominik Riechers , astronomer at Cornell University , wrote in an accompanying Nature `` News and Views '' article . `` We need much deeper observation to try to see this Lyman-alpha emission , '' Finkelstein said . More most-distant galaxies to come ? Finkelstein and colleagues found this most distant galaxy on the first of two nights of observation , during a period of about six hours . They have applied for more nights at Keck for follow-up , so z8_GND_5296 may soon have competition for the distance record . Let 's hope these far , far away galaxies do n't have Star-Wars-ish civil wars . Follow Elizabeth Landau on Twitter at @ lizlandau .
Most distant galaxy came 700 million years after the Big Bang . It produces stars at a rate more than 100 times faster than the Milky Way . The galaxy 's light is red-shifted because the universe is expanding .