These two images of a huge pillar of star birth demonstrate how observations taken in visible and in infrared light by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveal dramatically different and complementary views of an object. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.Stars Bursting to Life in Chaotic Carina Nebula

The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of their rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Combined as HaRGB in PixInsight & Photoshop.22 x 60s RGB (22 mins) QHY12 CCD / Celestron 11″ RASA F2.2.79 x 90s Hydrogen Alpha (2 hours) QHY9 CCD / Celestron 9.25″ F6.3.It’s a small crop into a massive dominant nebula that is really easy to photograph because it’s so bright and crisp. But if you stand back and squint your eyes and pretend Hubble sent you this natural colour image of the Southern Hemisphere’s greatest asset, it’s not a bad pic and would probably make a nice wallpaper for a 4K screen 🙂 There are a number of cool features in this region including “Mystic Mountain”, the Homunculus and God’s middle finger. It’s a 2-panel mosaic and close to the full raw resolution so if you download the file and zoom in you get to see all the noise imperfections and colour mapping distortions and all that other embarrassing stuff. I don’t normally do this but here is a 4K resolution version of the inner region of the Carina nebula.

Carina nebula 4k