A few days ago, Astronomers observed an extraordinary event. Swift, a satellite used to study gamma-ray bursts recorded an explosion which was so strong that the optical afterglow could have been seen with a naked eye making it the farthest object that could be seen without a telescope or other technical means. It's distance is 7.5 billion lightyears, that's about 7.09x10²²km. And it means that the event happened 7.5 billion years ago when the universe was less than half its age and Earth didn't exist yet. The burst probably stems from a star collapsing into a black hole.

Polish "Pi of the sky" detector which continuously looks for optical flashes in the night sky recorded the burst. And wikipedia has some pictures made by the swift satellite.

[Edit: fixed  spelling mistake]