13.1 billion years ago, on the edge of the Universe, a star exploded

The most distant object to be recorded by a telescope changes relatively regularly as telescope technology improves. This time, astronomers have detected a star that is believed to have exploded a mere 520 million years after the Big Bang.

Thanks to the cosmic speed limit of around 300 million metres per second (the speed of light), telescopes don't just probe distance -- they also probe time. The further away an object is, the longer it takes for information about that object to get to Earth, meaning that the furthest objects we see are also the oldest.
Back in April 2009, Nasa's Swift space observatory detected a gamma ray burst, which is usually associated with violent processes like the collapse of a giant star. The afterglow of that burst was observed by other telescopes which were then able to determine the distance that the event occurred at -- 13.14 billion light years away.
It's not clear whether the exploding star was part of the so-called " Population III" stars, which were the very first generation of stars in the Universe, but it was certainly in a very early stage of star formation. The Population III stars would have produced the first heavy elements in the Universe, burning brightly but briefly.
Swift will continue searching for these stars, but it faces fierce competition from the Hubble space telescope, which in 2009 was equipped with more powerful instruments to try and see further. The latest images recieved by astronomers show galaxies that lie not far short of this exploding star, and possibly even beyond it.
The finding was announced at the 218th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Boston.

By Duncan Geere via http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-05/26/space-distance-record

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