All that emptiness in outer space leaves lots of room for gorgeous galactic fireworks shows.
What you’re seeing here, according to NASA, is a “relatively rare celestial phenomenon” called a Herbig-Haro object. It’s created when ionized gas expelled by a young star collides with the clouds of dust and gas that surround these new (relatively speaking) stellar formations.
This Herbig-Haro object, named HH111, comes to us
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, B. Nisini
The expelled gas is ionized by a young star when the intense heat in these regions of space causes the atoms and molecules making up the gas to lose their electrons. That charged gas speeds away from its source, and it collides with the physical matter surrounding the young star as it goes. These collisions create the streaking bursts of light you see in HH111, and they’re the building blocks of Herbig-Haro objects in general.
This view of HH111 was made possible by Hubble’s WFC3 because of how it captures light. As
The result is this beautiful, blue-tinged streak of light cutting across space. A