Comet Enthusiast

Cosmic Ice Sculptures: Dust Pillars in the Carina Nebula. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Project (STScI/AURA) Acknowledgment: M. Livio (STScI) and N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley)

What can we say? Another Hubble stunner, and just wait until you see flythough video below. This is an absolutely gorgeous look inside the Carina Nebula. The radiation from massive stars inside the nebula eats away at cold molecular clouds, creating bizarre, fantasy-like structures. These are one-light-year-tall pillars of cold hydrogen and dust, imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, in a composite image from observations taken in 2005 in hydrogen light (light emitted by hydrogen atoms) along with observations taken in oxygen light (light emitted by oxygen atoms) in 2010. What Hubble can see from about 7,500 light-years away is nothing short of breathtaking.

Here’s the regular video – in which there are 3-D-type flythough effects:

And grab your 3-D glasses for the full effect:

See more at the HubbleSite.

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