A multi-national team of astronomers have peered into the reaches of observable space and discovered a dwarf galaxy, now dubbed Kks3.

Unlike our own Milky Way Galaxy, rife with gas and dust, Kks3’s materials have largely been absorbed into nearby, larger galaxies.

KkS3 is an early artifact of our universe’s growth, reportedly dating back 12 billion years.

Developing scientists’ growing map of the universe is no easy task. Team member Dimitry Makarov tells the Royal Astronomer’s Society that “Finding objects like Kks3 is painstaking work, even with observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope.” He adds, “But with persistence, we’re slowly building up a map of our local neighborhood, which turns out to be less empty than we thought. It may be that there are a huge number of dwarf spheroidal galaxies out there, something that would have profound consequences for our ideas about the evolution of the cosmos.”

Dwarf spheroidal galaxies provide fantastic templates for researchers hoping to more fully understand star formation due to their conspicuous lack of gas, dust, and spiral arms.

In the official press release that announced Kks3, the Astronomer’s Society explain that isolated objects follow a different evolutionary trajectory than more commonly known galaxies like Andromeda.

Researchers believe that “an early burst of star formation that used up the available gas resources” may be to blame for Kks3’s solitary existence.

The spheroidal galaxy was spotted using the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, and is the second such region of space found since 1999.

Earth, Kks3 and KKR 25, the other isolated galaxy, all lie within the Local Group, a group of over fifty galaxies. Only two local galaxies are visible to everyday spectators: Andromeda (M31) and Triangulum (M33).

Yet, there may be many undiscovered isolated galaxies. The team reportedly explains that “since the detection of such objects is difficult, the number of them within [32.6 million light years] may be considerable.”

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), both provide exciting promise for future astronomical discoveries, according to the researchers’ announcement.

When the E-ELT starts its commission, it will be equipped with the largest optical/near-infrared telescope in the world. The JWST will launch in 2018.

The study was originally published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.