Emma de Oña Wilhelmi

Stars are born in cold clouds of cosmic dust and hydrogen. Inside these cocoons, protostars — the cores of future suns — were long thought to be just hot clumps. But it turns out many of them are powerful accelerators: they shoot out narrow jets of gas that, slamming into surrounding matter, produce invisible gamma-ray light.

In the southern sky, behind a dense veil of dust, hides a source of gamma rays — the most energetic light in the Universe. It shines so brightly that it can be seen even through this veil, but the object itself remains invisible. Astronomers pointed the ALMA radio telescope at the neighboring gas clouds and saw a pattern that gave the invisible object away.