Using a telescope sensitive to radiation that human eyes cannot see, an international team of astronomers may have detected a population of young dusty galaxies inside which were born the first stars like our sun.

The universe is believed to be about 15bn years old. It was thought that the formation of stars out of clouds of gas and dust peaked when the universe was about half of its present age.

But it now seems that there was an earlier burst of star formation in what astronomers have called the 'hidden universe.'

The image, taken by the James Clerk Maxwell telescope on Hawaii, is of the most distant parts of the cosmos. It shows young galaxies which contain large amounts of dust.

The James Clerk Maxwell telescope

Inside that dust are myriads of young stars that signal the formation may have occurred at a much more frenetic pace when the universe was young than had been thought.

In our own galaxy about one new star is formed every year. In some of these newly discovered young galaxies up to 100 stars may be born annually.

Dr Richard Ellis, of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge in Britain, said: "These observations have opened an exciting new era in cosmological exploration."

The reseach is published in the journal Nature.