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Resembling a nightmarish beast rearing its head from a crimson sea, this celestial
object is actually just a pillar of gas and dust. Called the Cone Nebula (in NGC 2264) -
so named because in ground-based images it has a conical shape - this monstrous pillar
resides in a turbulent star-forming region. This picture, taken by the newly installed
Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the
upper 2.5 light-years of the Cone, a height that equals 23 million roundtrips to the Moon.
The entire pillar is seven light-years long.
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