[mnehring]

Look at the picture again. By the big bang principles, this quasar must be billions of light years farther from us than the galaxy, because its redshift is so much larger. And yet the galaxy is opaque, so the quasar must be near the surface of the dust clouds or even in front of them.

Actually not, if the dust clouds have a large enough gravitational field, you may be seeing stars behind the dust cloud, but the light is bent around the gravitational object.
We see this with stars and our Sun.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

That would be pretty extreme bending...I didn’t think the effect was that strong....