Image 6-24
Mystic Mountain

This craggy fantasy mountaintop enshrouded by wispy clouds looks like a bizarre landscape from a fantasy story. This Hubble Space Telescope 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. This turbulent cosmic pinnacle lies within a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Carina.