English: A dusty pillar enveloped with glowing gas along the southern edge of the Soul Nebula, also known as IC 1871. These have always been among my favorite objects to look at. The data are a bit noisy, unfortunately, which really impacts the image quality, but I still find it delightful. The glowing yellowish areas are places where young stellar objects have begun to shine through their thick, dusty shells. Meanwhile, the outside of the pillar is being shaped by the winds of bright stars outside the upper boundary of the image.

I decided to make the H-alpha blue this time instead of pink. This image contains near-infrared data so it makes sense in a way, but in another way it would have been fine to make it pink like I did with the Caterpillar, too.

Data from the following proposal were used to create this image: Star-Formation in Free-Floating Evaporating Gaseous Globules

Blue (screen): ACS/WFC F658N Orange: ACS/WFC F814W Cyan: ACS/WFC F606W

North is 26.55° counter-clockwise from up.