Three Ly-alpha emitting galaxies at redshift 2.38 were discovered, presumably associated withthe absorbing gas cloud. The telescopes amplify the image by 100 million times, making the galaxy visible. This object is so far from Earth that the light that eventually made up this image was emitted by Blob 1 about a billion years ago. Hence this is how Blob 1 appeared about 1000 million years ago. The white objects in the image are stars in our own galaxy, much much closer to us.
Yellow objects are relatively nearby galaxies, less than one billion light-years away.
Some of the faint red blobs near Blob 1 are other galaxies near it, and will probably collide with Blob 1 soon. Preliminary results on this field have been published, and a reprint is avaliable. Closeup A close-up of Blob 1. Thus this is a purely infrared image. Notice the distinctively yellow colours of B1 and B4, due to their redshifted 4000A breaks.