The The dark vertical streak in the center of the image conceals OH 339.88-1.26, which is an astrophysical maser. A maser — which is an acronym for “microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation” — is essentially a laser that produces coherent light at microwave wavelengths. These intriguing phenomena naturally arise in a range of astrophysical contexts, from the north pole of Jupiter to star-forming regions like the one depicted here.
Hubble’s Deep Dive into Star Formation
This image comes from a set of Hubble observations that peer into the hearts of regions where massive stars are born, with the goal of constraining the nature of massive protostars and testing theories of their formation. Astronomers turned to Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) to explore five intermediate-mass protostars at infrared wavelengths.
The Hubble observations were supported by other state-of-the-art observatories including ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array.