To celebrate the Hubble Space Telescope’s 20th anniversary, NASA released this composite visible-light portrait of a nearby star-forming region, the Carina nebula. Towers of gas and dust, the home to newborn stars, line the walls of the nebula, which lies about 7,500 light-years from Earth. The image captures the violent activity atop a pillar of gas and dust that stands three light-years tall. Intense ultraviolet radiation and streams of charged particles from hot newborn stars just outside this view are compressing the pillar, triggering the formation of new stars within it. Streamers of hot ionized gas flow off the ridges of the pillars while starlit wisps of gas and dust float around the peaks.
Credit: Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)
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