A new telescope installed by the European Southern Observatory achieved "first light" last month, and the images were released recently.

This three-color composite image shows a developing star, called a "proto-star," known as Herbig-Haro 34 (HH-34).

Two opposite jets ram into the surrounding interstellar matter. This structure is produced by a machine-gun-like blast of "bullets" of dense gas ejected from the star at high velocities (approaching 250 kilometers per second). This seems to indicate that the star experiences episodic "outbursts" when large chunks of material fall onto it from a surrounding disk, researchers say.

An unexplained waterfall of material streams in from the upper left.