Nine tiny galaxies.

Science Daily reports on astronomers making an atypically cute discovery. The Hubble Space Telescope has isolated nine new galaxies – the smallest galaxies ever observed:

…[T]he nine compact galaxies discovered by the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes are 100 to 1,000 times smaller than the Milky Way galaxy.

“These are among the lowest mass galaxies ever directly observed in the early universe,” said Nor Pirzkal of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

I bet they’re even cuddlier up close.