Question About the Universe

I'm having a tough time understanding this.This story just came out recently. Star 13 Billion Light Years AwayI'm told that the universe is about 13 billion years old, and here we have a star that is observed by us to be 13 billion light years away.1/ Doesn't this mean that what we are now seeing is that star as it was at a time very shortly after the Big Bang?2/ I also understood that there is an "event horizon" because of the expansion of the universe that has moved galaxies beyond our ability to perceive them. However here we have a star that has been here since nearly T=0 and we're still able to view it. Why is that?3/ Using the penny on the balloon analogy shouldn't this mean that we are looking virtually all the way around the balloon, (the universe), and if we looked in another direction that we could see the same star very much closer?I'm only suggesting this as a topic of discussion for my own information. I don't pretend to have the knowledge to actually debate it.

Stephen Hawking write that after 1,000 million, (an American billion), years after the BB "Clusters of matter form quasars, stars and proto-galaxies". If as RDK says, the universe is 13.87 billion years old, wouldn't this make it among the very first stars to be formed? As I understand it, we are seeing the light that left that star 13 billion years ago even though, from our perspective, that star has since that time inflated beyond the cosmological horizon. If then, we can look out into space and see things as they were 13 billion ago then what is left to have inflated beyond our ability to perceive?

Hi BluejayI believe, that although the star would have been closer in the past it doesn't change the fact that the light from that star that was recently viewed left it 13 billion years ago. I would imagine that if we could see that star as things are right now it would likely have burned itself out, but if it still existed it would be much further away than 13 billion light years.

I understand that at as galaxies expand further away from us the rate of expansion increases to the point at which it exceeds the speed of light. At that point in time light is no longer able to reach us, (cosmological horizon) however light that it had previously emitted, (as we perceive it) would continue its journey enroute to our telescope.My question is this. It seems to me that seeing as how, (as you say, if we have everything right), that what we are seeing is something that is as far back in time as it is possible for us to view. We are viewing it as it was 13 billion years ago. Does this mean then that from our perspective there is no part of the universe that we can't view, even though much of the universe including this particular star has since moved beyond the cosmological horizon.I hope that makes better sense.
Thanks

I'd just like to throw this out to anyone. Cavediver writes;

quote:

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Most of the Universe has never been visible to us and never will. This "star" was relatively very close to us for it to be visible at all.

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This star is 13 billion years old making it one of the byears ago it was still within the cosmological horizon, what would never have been visible to us? Wouldn't anything that had never been visible, or that is not visible to us now, have to be older than this star that is 13 billion light years away, and if this was one of the first stars formed what could be older?Edited by GDR, : erred in writing million instead of billion as pointed out lvx2no

I can hardly wait. Thanks a lot lyx2no. That clears it up for me.