But the great number of faint galaxies led the astronomers to suspect they were close.
Instead, it has one bright globular cluster and many faint galaxies.
It took the Hubble's observational power to see the much fainter galaxies so far away.
The faintest galaxies are one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see.
For instance, looking at faint galaxies and quasars requires a dark night sky, he said.
They may be a local (and recent) version of the faint blue galaxies known to exist in deep field galaxy surveys.
Herschel also observed three faint galaxies, two of which are interacting with each other.
The 'bowl' of the Y is crowded with faint galaxies.
This way a very distant and faint galaxy can become visible, while we normally would not be able to observe it.
A second problem arose in 1988, with even deeper observations showing a much greater excess of faint galaxies.