The Hubble space telescope has taken pictures of ancient galaxies that have never been seen before by human eyes.

Faint red images of the galaxies, which date back to the infancy of the universe, were captured with a new infrared camera.

Scientists who studied pictures of the star systems, which were formed 600 million years ago, said they were "likely to be the most distant ever seen."

Most sensitive images

The images are the most sensitive to date of a region of space called the Ultra Deep Field.

"We can now look even further back in time, identifying galaxies when the universe was only five percent of its current age - within one billion years of the Big Bang," said Daniel Stark, a researcher involved in the work at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, England.

The Wide Field Camera 3 took the picture using light which is invisible to the human eye, with the longer wavelengths necessary to see such distant objects.

Distant red light

"The expansion of the universe causes the light from very distant galaxies to appear redder, so having a new camera on Hubble, which is very sensitive in the infrared means we can identify galaxies at much greater distances than was previously possible," said Stephen Wilkins, a researcher in astrophysics at Oxford University.

The new equipment was installed in May in a spacewalk by NASA astronauts as part of an upgrade to the 19-year old telescope.

Teams from Oxford and Edinburgh are set to publish their analysis in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

rc/AP/AFP

Editor: Susan Houlton