Credit: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

This is an artist's impression of two young binary stars that may be the source of mysterious clock-like bursts of light from an object called LRLL 54361 that lies inside the star-forming region IC 348, located 950 light-years away. Astronomers propose that the flashes are due to material in a circumstellar disk suddenly being dumped onto the growing young stars and unleashing a blast of radiation each time the stars get close to each other in their orbit.