But with future telescopes, scientists say it may be possible to see past the blinding glare of the parent star to pick out just the faint light passing through a small world's atmosphere or even reflected off its surface.

BBC: Kepler telescope spies 'most Earth-like' worlds to date

Only the light from some faint galaxies has been detected beyond this burst - 100-300 million light-years further away.

BBC: Observatory detects record burst

To observe such a distant, faint object, scientists had to collect light through the telescopes over 37 hours, letting more and more light accumulate to see as deep as possible.

MSN: Newfound galaxy may be most distant ever seen

Now that Dr van Paradijs's team, and another led by Kailash Sahu at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, have had time to look properly at the fading point of light, they have noticed a faint fuzz around it that looks as if it could be a galaxy playing host to a dramatic explosion.

ECONOMIST: Astronomy

The reason astronomers want to observe reflected sunlight during the transit of Venus is to test whether they can detect the faint imprint of passage of the sun's light through the atmosphere of Venus.

CNN: A transit of Venus, an age of wondrous science

Unfortunately, this technique produces lots of faint dots, many of which are tricks of the light.

ECONOMIST: Unbuckling the Kuiper belt

Subsequent observations with an infra-red telescope, which can see things that are too cool to shine with visible light, showed that it was a very faint star so faint that it is off the bottom of astronomers' scale of stellar classification.

ECONOMIST: Twinkle, twinkle, giant planet

CCDs are much more efficient at imaging very faint objects and are far less likely to be foiled by Earth-based light.

FORBES: A Star Is Born