Photo by Nick Krug

Kansas University assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics, Gregory Rudnick gives a lecture on Friday, May 3, 2013 in Malott Hall.

Kansas University associate professor Gregory Rudnick was glad when the recent discovery of a distant galaxy in the process of forming made the news.

The mind-blowing factor of such discoveries always helps invigorate the publics interest in astronomy, and thats a good thing, said Rudnick, who teaches physics and astronomy at KU.

In this case, astronomers for the first time caught a glimpse of the earliest stages of massive galaxy construction, NASA announced last month. NASA described the site, nicknamed "Sparky," as a dense galactic core blazing with the light of millions of newborn stars that are forming at a ferocious rate.

Now for the mind-blowing part.

Sparky is so far away from us that light from it takes 11 billion years to reach the Earth talk about distant.

By comparison, light from the sun takes 8 minutes to reach us, and it is 93 million miles away from Earth, Rudnick said.

When the light left this galaxy, the sun was not even born yet, Rudnick said. Its crazy-far away.

Rudnick said he was on a team of scientists that helped discover similar galaxies that appeared to have already finished forming, which they documented in a 2013 paper. But he said information like how the objects looked before forming and exactly how far away they were was still a mystery.

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KU teacher: 'Mind-blowing' discovery invigorates interest in astronomy