APEX view of the region around the Spiderweb galaxy

This image shows the APEX view in sub-millimetre light of the region around the Spiderweb Galaxy — a protocluster of galaxies in the early Universe surrounding a radio galaxy containing a supermassive black hole. Some of the blobs in this image correspond to dusty star-forming galaxies in the protocluster that cannot be seen in visible light due to absorption by dust. The fainter features here are artifacts of the difficult APEX image processing.