ASTRONOMERS at Durham University will today throw new light on the formation of galaxies billions of years away from Earth.

Research carried out by The Durham Cosmology Group shows there are star systems beyond what scientists have called The Final Frontier - a time before galaxies are believed to have formed.

The team will present its findings to The International Astronomical Union General Assembly in Manchester today. The new evidence suggests the galaxies were in existence ten billion years ago, much earlier than previously thought. At that time the universe was six times smaller than it is now.

Dr Tom Shanks, reader in the department of physics at Durham University, said his team's research would test theories on how and when galaxies formed.

Using a measure called redshift - which records distances based on increasing redness of light from galaxies the further away they are from Earth - the astronomers photographed systems with redshifts between four and six.

Most popular theories so far have said galaxies formed relatively recently and predict hardly any should be seen with redshifts above two. It takes 25,000 years for light to travel from the centre of our Milky Way galaxy to the Earth.

But because the light recorded by Durham University's scientists has come from even further away it has taken ten billion years to reach us, meaning the group's pictures probe back in distance and time. Dr Shanks said: "It is fair to suggest these galaxies are close to their birth and we are seeing them as they were a long time ago.

"This is a great help because it allows us to test theories about what a forming or young galaxy may look like.

"We are hoping this will give us clues about how our own Milky Way galaxy was formed."

Dr Shanks added: "This discovery means continuing success for our research in cosmology.

"We are one of the leading centres in the world for cosmological research and we are up there in the UK with Oxford and Cambridge."

And do all these new galaxies mean we are not alone in the universe? "There is that possibility," Dr Shanks said.