WASHINGTON: The Hubble Space Telescope is giving scientists a look at the oldest galaxies ever seen, dating back some 13.3 billion years—providing a glimpse into how the cosmos must have looked right after the Big Bang.

NASA scientists announced on Wednesday that Hubble has uncovered seven never-before-seen primitive galaxies dating back to when the universe was less than four percent of its current age.

These archeological images from Hubble were gleaned from an intensively studied patch of sky known as the Ultra Deep Field.

A team of astronomers led by Richard Ellis of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to peer deeper into space than any previous Hubble observation.

Hubble scientists said that the most ancient of the seven new galaxies came into being about 13.3 billion years ago—some 380 million years after the Big Bang.

With this newest discovery, scientists nudge even a little closer to the very origins of the universe.

“Looking at these galaxies allows us to learn many, many things about the universe after the Big Bang—about our origins,” said Abraham Loeb, chairman of the Astronomy Department at Harvard University.

“For instance, we discovered that the galaxies then were 1,000 times denser than the galaxies today,” he said.

“These pictures are like the first ultrasound of an infant. It’s the oldest archeology material on the universe,” said Loeb.

He expressed hope that Hubble may be able to plumb the depths of space for even older galaxies, perhaps nearly as old as the universe.

“To find the first galaxies we will have to look further, but there is less light, the galaxies are smaller,” Loeb told reporters.

The never-seen-before galaxies are key to interpreting the development of the first stars and the formation of the first galaxies that later evolved into the elliptical galaxies like our own Milky Way that now populate the universe, the space agency said.