In Brief:

(CNN) -- A galaxy in the vicinity of the Big Dipper has lost its title as most distant object known in the universe, NASA scientists said this week. The new king of cosmic distances, discovered in September, is a quasar more than 10 billion light years way.

Astronomers stripped the title from the faint galaxy informally known as Sharon after using improved techniques to estimate its distance. They determined it was much closer than originally thought.

Scientists looking at images from the Hubble Space Telescope first reported Sharon in 1999. They then calculated its distance at about 12.5 billion light years, the equivalent to looking back in time to some 600 million years after the Big Bang.

Astronomers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said new observations indicate the galaxy is likely about 10 billion light years away. For their study they used images taken by the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

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