NORMAN, Okla. (KFOR) — Dr. Nikki Nielsen saw outer space up close and personal recently, and she got the opportunity with her research, while analyzing the highest resolution photo of a distant galaxy we’ve ever seen. Inside the walls of Nielsen Hall on the University of Oklahoma campus marked her first semester as an assistant professor there. Even after her big find, she’s also teaching her students to reach for the stars. LOCAL NEWS: Plaza Towers Elementary unveils upgraded Thunder basketball court "Where do all the elements that we are made of come from?” She said. “To do that, we need to look at how stars form, how planets form, but also how galaxies come to be." It wasn’t long ago that she went to Hawaii’s Keck Observatory, atop the Mauna Kea volcano, to reach for herself. She reached about 270 million light years to be exact and took the highest resolution picture of a distant galaxy that we’ve ever seen. "All that purple stuff around the galaxy is what we found,” she said. The artists rendering in this story shows a galaxy recycling and evolving with that “purple stuff.” It’s different gasses that form stars as others die. Artist rendering of a star-bursting galaxy, image courtesy University of Oklahoma. OU researcher Nikki Nielsen standing in front of Keck Observatory, image courtesy University of Oklahoma. "So studying that gives you a good sense as for where all of our star stuff comes from,” Nielsen said. It’s a massive discovery in the world of astronomy with something never seen before in such detail. "We expected it to drop off pretty quickly and stop glowing once you get out to a certain place but it was everywhere,” she said. Nielsen said a recent survey among astronomers showed this being a major area in need of study. She’s taken a giant leap for mankind in the field. "It's quite significant and hopefully we'll be able to do it much more and hopefully a little bit more easily in the future,” she said. Nielsen said she has more mapped out galaxies and research she hasn’t published yet. She hopes to get other Ph.D. students involved at some point as well.