Galaxies have been discovered in many sizes, from the incredibly large to those so tiny they are called dwarf galaxies. And galaxies have been found to take on a number of shapes, from near-spheres to elliptical configurations to the familiar pinwheel of stars like our Milky Way, which astronomers call a spiral galaxy.

But one thing that had never been seen was a dwarf spiral galaxy, until now.

A fuzzy dot (left) is found to have a spiral structure after scientists processed the image.

Across the universe, galaxies gather in clusters, and within each cluster, dwarf galaxies are abundant. In fact, dwarf galaxies are more common than any other type. They can contain a few tens of millions of stars, whereas "normal" galaxies sometimes hold hundreds of billions of stars.

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are some of the best known dwarf galaxies; they are part of what astronomers call the local group of galaxies, which includes our own.

Like elliptical galaxies of normal size, dwarf ellipticals are almost pure aggregates of stars. In contrast, spiral galaxies also contain clouds of gas and dust. The visible mass of spiral galaxies is in a rotating disk. Dwarf ellipticals generally keep their form because of the random motions of their stars.

Astronomers are unsure what caused the spiral structure, but said it implies IC 3382 harbors a thin disk of gas, dust and stars. The disk may have been created by the gravitational interaction with two nearby dwarf galaxies.