Birds on the Brain

Herbig-Haro 110 - a geyser of hot gas from a newborn star - splashes up against and ricochets off the dense core of a cloud of molecular hydrogen. Although the plumes of gas look like whiffs of smoke, they are actually billions of times less dense than the smoke from a firework. This Hubble Space Telescope photo shows the integrated light from plumes, which are light-years across. Astronomers now believe that the nearby HH 270 jet grazes an immovable obstacle, a much denser, colder cloud core, and gets diverted off at about a 60-degree angle. Picture: REUTERS/NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (via Pictures of the day: 4 July 2012 - Telegraph)