Mystic Mountain, NGC 3372 Hubble Space Telescope

Mystic Mountain, NGC 3372  A jewel of the southern sky, the Great Carina Nebula, also known as NGC 3372, spans over 300 light-years and is 7500 light years distant, is one of our galaxy’s largest star forming regions. Within this nebula the Hubble telescope 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 known as the Mystic Mountain 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.The image taken in 2010 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. 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. This image was done by Michael Adler using data from the Hubble Telescope Archive. It is based on three black and white images taken through narrow atomic filters which capture emissions from Sulfur which is red in this image, Hydrogen, green here, and Oxygen, blue here. These images are stretched, combined, and processed to form this beautiful image.

The location of the Mystic Mountain is just above the star cluster Trumpler 14 in my image of the Carina Nebula taken with the CDK17 telescope in Chile. https://earthandskyimaging.com/product/keyhole-nebula-ngc-3372-hubble-palette-sho/ The cluster is in the upper right of the image and the Mystic Mountain is a little above and slightly left of the cluster. It is upside down from the image here. See if you can find it,