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TWO RAYS OF light shoot out from a newborn star, piercing space at over 100,000 miles an hour.
It sounds like a scene from Star Wars, as Nasa couldn’t resist pointing out during the week when it cleverly released these photos to coincide with the latest installment of the film series.
“Perfectly timed for the release of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, the Nasa/ESA Hubble Space telescope has imaged a cosmic double-bladed lightsaber,” the space agency said in a statement.
In the centre of the image, partially obscured by a dark Jedi-like cloak of dust, an adolescent star shoots twin jets out into space, demonstrating the fearsome forces of the universe.
The lightsaber lies not in a galaxy far, far away, but within our own, the Milky Way, in a turbulent breeding ground for new stars over 1,350 light years away.
And it has a blast “stronger than one from a fully armed and operational Death Star battle station”, Nasa said.
Impressive.
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