The European Space Agency has released this bubbling snap from performance testing on its Herschel spacecraft. The SPIRE (Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver) and PACS (Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer) instruments trained their eyes in parallel on the Southern Cross constellation in our Milky Way galaxy. Each uses slightly different wavelengths of light, and their views are overlaid in this composite image. It reveals cold interstellar material “condensing in a continuous and interconnected maze of filaments and strings of newly-forming stars in all stages of development,” says ESA.

Herschel’s third instrument, the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HiFi), is still out of action, though the mission is due to start routine operations next week.