First Light opens a window into a previously dark and secret time in our Universe''s history – the time when the first starts were born.Astronomers have successfully observed a great deal of the Universe''s history, from recording the afterglow of the Big Bang to imaging thousands of galaxies, and even to visualising an actual black holeThere''s a lot for astronomers to be smug about. But when it comes to understanding how the Universe began and grew up we are literally in the dark ages. In effect, we are missing the first one billion years from the timeline of the Universe.This brief but far-reaching period in the Universe''s history, known to astrophysicists as the ''Epoch of Reionisation'', represents the start of the cosmos as we experience it todayThe time when the very first stars burst into life, when darkness gave way to light. After hundreds of millions of years of dark, uneventful expansion, one by the one these stars suddenly came into being. This was the point at which the