Astronomers have just discovered two galaxies that were previously invisible to us.

This made them invisible to the optical lens of the Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched in 1990 and is considered “one of the largest and most versatile [telescopes], renowned both as a vital research tool and as a public relations boon for astronomy.”.

As both of these neighboring galaxies are surrounded by dust, some of their light is blocked, making them invisible to [the Hubble Space Telescope],” Pascal Oesch, an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen, said in a statement.

“We are trying to put the big puzzle about the universe’s formation together and answer the most basic question: ‘Where does it all come from?'” Oesch explained, adding that “the invisible galaxies that we’ve discovered in the early universe are some of the first building blocks of the mature galaxies we see around us in the Universe today.

Their discovery suggests that the universe may actually contain many more galaxies than scientists had previously assumed.

Before we can start to understand when and how galaxies formed in the universe, we first need a proper accounting,” Oesch notes.