STELLAR TANTRUM

One of the rarer events to be photographed in the universe, this explosion of cosmic dust is from a Herbig-haro object. These spindly jets of matter remained a mystery to astronomers until 1997, when it was discovered that at the centre of the jets is a baby star called a protostar, not visible in this image. The protostar is ejecting matter at speeds of around 93 miles per second. When this hits the surrounding gas, the collision causes a bright shock wave, which the Hubble Space Telescope was able to capture in this image. At the centre are two Herbig-haro objects called HH 46 and HH 47, which were snapped 1,400 light years away from Earth in the constellation Vela.