Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Bourke (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA) & c2d Legacy Team

Two rambunctious young stars are destroying their natal dust cloud with powerful jets of radiation, revealed in an infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The stars are located approximately 600 light-years away in a cosmic cloud called BHR 71.

IIn infrared light, the baby stars are shown as the bright yellow smudges toward the center. Both of these yellow spots have wisps of green shooting out of them. The green wisps reveal the beginning of a jet. Like a rainbow, the jet begins as green, then transitions to orange, and red toward the end.