"Mystic Mountain" - HH 910/902, Hubble Space Telescope (Rudy Pohl)

"Mystic Mountain" - HH 910/902, Hubble Space Telescope

Data acquisition: Hubble Legacy Archive, NASA

Data processing: Rudy Pohl

RGB image

"Mystic Mountain" is another iconic image from the Hubble Space Telescope and was chosen by NASA to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Hubble's launch and deployment into an orbit around the Earth.

This image shows an enormous mountain of dust and gas rising up in the star-producing Carina Nebula. The top of the three-light-year-long vertical pillar of cool hydrogen gas (the dark rusty coloured pillar in the centre of the image) is being worn away by the radiation of nearby stars, while stars within the pillar itself unleash jets of gas that stream laterally from the peaks.

This craggy fantasy-like mountaintop enshrouded by wispy clouds looks like a bizarre landscape from Tolkien’s "The Lord of the Rings." The colours in this composite image correspond to the glow of oxygen (blue), hydrogen and nitrogen (green), and sulphur (red).

Click on image to enlarge it and see the ultra-fine details on this superbly captured image from the Earth's premiere telescope.

Original
E
Final
F

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	2647904
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):