Distant stars. Infrared Spitzer Space Telescope image of distant stars and galaxies in a patch of sky in the constellation Draco. It was in this region that the light from the first generation of stars in the universe was detected. The light from known objects was masked out, revealing a faint background glow. This is thought to be the light from Population III stars, which formed over 13 billion years ago, when the universe was only a few hundred million years old. These stars were huge and hot, and the energetic ultraviolet light they emitted has been redshifted to infrared as the universe expanded. For this region masked to reveal the infrared background, see R980/190.