Of course, the idea of a gravitational lens showing them a fisheye view of the space past what they imagine is beyond their imagination

A strange giant space "blob" spotted when the universe was relatively young has got astronomers puzzled.

Using space and ground telescopes, astronomers looked back to when the universe was only 800 million years old and found something that was out of proportion and out of time. It was gaseous, big, and emitted a certain type of radiation, said study lead author Masami Ouchi, an astronomer at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, Calif.

Scientists don't even know what to call it. So they just called it a radiation-emitting "blob." They used that horror-film staple 34 times in their peer-reviewed study, which will be published in next month's edition of the Astrophysical Journal. More formally, they named it Himiko, after a legendary ancient Japanese queen.

The photo of it is beyond fuzzy.

"The puzzle is - what is it?" said California Institute of Technology astronomer Richard Ellis, who wasn't on the research team but praised the find. "Often a puzzle leads to a breakthrough. My nose tells me that this object is rather special."

Ouchi and Ellis said one possibility is that by chance, astronomers captured the moment a galaxy was forming in the early universe - something that never has been seen before.

As astronomers gaze deeper into space, they are looking farther back in time. What Ouchi found was from 12.9 billion years ago. Only three other objects have been seen that are from deeper in time and space.