Behind a cloud of dust in this Hubble Space Telescope photo hides a young star with a very cool superpower. The protostar OH-39988-1.26 is what’s called an astrophysical maser: it emits beams like a giant, naturally-occurring laser — except those beams are in the extremely long wavelengths of microwave radiation, instead of the light our eyes can see (maser is an acronym for Microwave Amplification by Stimulation Emission of Radiation).
