ABOUT THIS IMAGE:
This craggy fantasy mountaintop enshrouded by wispy clouds looks like a bizarre landscape from Tolkien's 
"The Lord of the Rings" or a Dr. Seuss book, depending on your imagination. The NASA Hubble Space 
Telescope image, which is even more dramatic than fiction, 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.

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 image celebrates the 20th 
anniversary of Hubble's launch and deployment into an orbit around Earth.

Scorching radiation and fast winds (streams of charged particles) from super-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 gas and 
dust, illuminated by starlight, float around its towering peaks. The denser parts of the pillar are 
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 (known as HH 901 and HH 902, respectively) 
are the signpost for new star birth. The jets are launched by swirling disks around the young stars, 
which allow material to slowly accrete onto the stars' surfaces.

Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 observed the pillar on Feb. 1-2, 2010. The colors in this composite 
image correspond to the glow of oxygen (blue), hydrogen and nitrogen (green), and sulfur (red).

Object Names: HH 901, HH 902

Image Type: Astronomical


Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)