Mystic Mountain: Pillars in the Carina Nebula from Hubble

This craggy mountaintop enshrouded by wispy clouds looks like a fantasy landscape from imaginative fiction. However, this NASA Hubble Space Telescope photograph exemplifies the adage that truth is stranger than fiction.

The image captures the chaotic activity atop a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being assaulted from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks.

Scorching radiation and fast winds (streams of charged particles) from hot newborn stars in the nebula are shaping and compressing the pillar, causing new stars to form within it. Streamers of hot ionized gas can be seen flowing off the ridges of the structure, and wispy veils of dust, illuminated by starlight, float around its peaks. The pillar is resisting being eroded by radiation much like a towering butte in Utah's Monument Valley withstands erosion by water and wind.

Nestled inside this dense mountain are fledgling stars. Long streamers of gas can be seen shooting in opposite directions off the pedestal at the top of the image. Another pair of jets is visible at another peak near the center of the image. These jets are the signpost for new star birth. The jets are launched by swirling disks around the stars, as these disks allow material to slowly accrete onto the stars' surfaces.

This turbulent cosmic pinnacle lies within a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. The colors in this composite image correspond to the glow of oxygen (blue), hydrogen and nitrogen (green), and sulfur (red).

See http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2010-13