Astronomers  have put NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on an Indiana Jones-type quest  to uncover an ancient “relic galaxy” in our own cosmic backyard.

The  very rare and odd assemblage of stars has remained essentially  unchanged for the past 10 billion years. This wayward stellar island  provides valuable new insights into the origin and evolution of galaxies  billions of years ago.

The  galaxy, NGC 1277, started its life with a bang long ago, ferociously  churning out stars 1,000 times faster than seen in our own Milky Way  today. But it abruptly went quiescent as the baby boomer stars aged and  grew ever redder.