Ellis, his PhD student Dan Stark and their colleagues trained one of the world's biggest telescopes, the Keck 2 atop Hawaii's Mauna Kea, to scan light grazing massive clusters of closer galaxies [see image above], which focused the light coming from more
ancient galaxies behind them and magnified it 20 times in a process called gravitational lensing.
Shepard feels the burden not only of that child's death, but of the death of every one of his friends and, most of all, the deaths of all those he leaves
behind on Earth as he sets off to complete his final and most important mission: to unite the
galaxy under one banner anc construct an
ancient super-weapon that is your only hope against the giant, ruthless machines that are now wiping out every trace of life in the
galaxy.