A star forming globule of dust and gas

The bright object in the centre is a Bok Globule, a small cloud of gas and dust in our Galaxy, in which a star may be forming. At optical wavelengths, this globule would look completely dark. This image, taken at 250 microns with the SPIRE camera is part of the first field observed during the H-ATLAS survey. The other objects in the field are distant galaxies, at distances up to 12 billion light-years. Hence, H-ATLAS is detecting radiation emitted not long after the Big Bang from distant celestial objects and also nearby celestial objects, virtually in our ‘backyard'.