As if the universe weren’t already mind-bogglingly big.

Just when we were starting to wrap our heads around this whole black-hole thing, a group of scientists has discovered something guaranteed to make us groan.

Actually, they’ve discovered 300,000 more things – additional galaxies we didn’t know were out there.

A team of astronomers from around the world on Tuesday published a new space map of the nighttime sky that features the previously unknown galaxies. And when you consider a single galaxy can contain millions or even billions of stars in its gravitational web of gas and dust, we’re talking a whole lotta start lights, star brights.

The team, which consisted of more than 200 astronomers from 18 countries, used something called “radio astronomy” to explore a section of sky above the northern hemisphere. And – voila! – there they were, 300,000 of them, hiding in plain sight. The radio astronomy was the key that unlocked it all, allowing the scientists to “detect radiation produced when massive celestial objects interact,” according to the Agence France-Presse news agency headquartered in Paris. “The team used the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope in the Netherlands to pick up traces — or ‘jets’ — of ancient radiation produced when galaxies merge. These jets, previously undetected, can extend over millions of light years.”

The space-geek community, of course, is beside itself. While the rest of us scratch out heads, trying to make sense of something downright incomprehensible, these stargazing men and women are salivating over the prospect of so many more galaxies to explore. Here’s a sampling of some of the reports coming from that crowd:

From Futurism.com: “According to Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) researcher Timothy Shimwell, processing that data to generate maps featuring these 300,000 additional galaxies was a team effort. “We have been working together with SURF in the Netherlands to efficiently transform the massive amounts of data into high-quality images,” he said in a press release. “These images are now public and will allow astronomers to study the evolution of galaxies in unprecedented detail.”

From The Lifeboat Foundation: “New Universe map unearths 300,000 more galaxies”

From Cyril Tasse, an astronomer at the Paris Observatory and participant in the project: “This is a new window on the universe,” he told AFP. “When we saw the first images we were like: ‘What is this?!’ It didn’t look anything at all like what we are used to seeing.”

From The Daily Galaxy: “Astronomers have recently discovered that the expanse of space-time within range of our telescopes—‘the universe’—is only a tiny fraction of the aftermath of the Big Bang. We expect to find far more galaxies located beyond the horizon, unobservable to current optical telescopes, says the great British astrophysicist, Martin Rees, ‘each of which (along with any civilizations it hosts) will evolve rather like our own.’”

From SciTechDaily: “More than 83,000 volunteer citizen scientists. Over 16 million galaxy classifications. Information on more than 300,000 galaxies. This is what you get when you ask the public for help in learning more about our universe. The project, named Galaxy Zoo 2, is the second phase of a crowdsourcing effort to categorize galaxies in our universe.”