This is one of the most dramatic, unique and beautiful astronomy images ever captured by the Hubble Space Telescope: The protostar Herbig-Haro 24, located in the L1630 cloud within the Orion B group, 1,500 light years from Earth. That beam is made by particle jets emanating from the primitive star:
Frequently when a star forms, a disk of dust and gas circles the YSO causing a powerful central jets to appear. In this case, the energetic jets are creating, at each end, Herbig-Haro object 24 (HH 24), as they slam into the surrounding interstellar gas. […] Due to their rarity, jets like that forming HH 24 are estimated to last only a few thousand years.
Spanning for trillions of miles, it reminds me a bit of a very angry Dark Phoenix about to devour a star. Or a knight slaying a dragon.
