Not so far away and long ago: A galaxy near the Big Dipper is no longer the "Most Distant Object Known," according to astronomers who have made new measurements of its distance. The team, led by Daniel Stern of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, included University of California, Davis, physicist Adam Stanford. Last year, a team of scientists reported that the galaxy, called "Sharon," was approximately 12.5 billion light years from Earth, equivalent to looking back in time to a few hundred million years after the beginning of the universe. The new data show that Sharon is more likely a mere 10 billion light years away. The title of most distant object now reverts to a quasar over 12 billion light years away, SDSS 1044-0125, discovered earlier this year by a team including UC Davis physicist Bob Becker. The findings are reported in the Nov. 30 issue of the journal Nature, alongside similar results from the scientists who made the initial estimate. The observations were made using images obtained at the W.M. Keck Observatory, Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Stanford, a UC Davis scientist who works at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, contributed to the study by working on near-infrared images of the object. The team also included members from JPL; University of California, Berkeley; the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; and Kitt Peak National Observatory.