* Astronomy

Rainbow-coloured jets in the cosmic cloud BHR 71 point to a celestial smash occurring 600 light-years away from Earth -- and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope provides an exclusive peek at the "jet-setting" stars inside.
The hot, young-stars can be seen in the Spitzer image (middle panel) as yellow spots with dual rainbow-coloured jets shooting out of them -- one from the top and one from the bottom of each star. The colours in the jets represent infrared light: green reveals really hot hydrogen gas, orange shows warm gas, and the wisps of red represent the coolest gas. These infrared rainbows of colour are exposed when shockwaves from the stars violently smash into surrounding gas and dust.


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Visible-light (left), infrared (middle), and combined visible-IR (right) views of BHR 71.
Credit J. Alves (ESO), E. Tolstoy (Groningen), R. Fosbury (ST-ECF), & R. Hook (ST-ECF), & VLT

Position (J2000): RA: 12h01m36.66s Dec: -65d08m48.30s

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