While chasing the spectrum of a mysterious arc in a cluster ofgalaxies within the obscure northerl constellationLynx, astronomers havestumbled upon the most massive and distant star-forming regio ever discovered.The notably red "Lynx arc" lies right of center i thiscolor image of the galaxy cluster, a composite ofHubble Space Telescope and ground-based data.While the galaxy cluster lies about 5 billionlight-years distant spectroscopic studiesshow that the arc itself is actually a distortedimage of an even more distant but enormous star-forming region.The image is formed as the closer galaxy cluster' gravitybends lightlike a magnifying lens, an effect explained by Einstein'stheory of gravity In fact, the monster star-forming region is nearly12 billio light-years awayand about a million times brighter than themore familiar stellar nursery, th Orion Nebula.Estimates are that the star-forming region seen as theLynx arc contains about a million massive, hot stars, comparedto the four stars which power theOrion Nebula's glow. Stars within the Lynx arc are more than twice as hotas the Orion Nebula's central starsand were formed whenthe Universe was a mere 2 billion years old.Still, astronomers believe that th first stars wereformed at even earlier times.
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