A landscape painting from another world. At first glance, this appears to be a mountain range at twilight, craggy peaks rising against a starry sky. In reality, it is the edge of a gigantic gaseous cavity within NGC 3324, located 7,600 light-years away. These 'mountains' are up to seven light-years high—towers of gas being eroded by the relentless ultraviolet radiation of massive, hot stars located just above the frame.
This image defines 'Cosmic Nature,' bridging the gap between terrestrial landscape art and deep-space astrophotography. The 'steam' rising from the peaks is actually hot, ionized gas flowing away from the nebula, while the gold and red jets shooting from the dust signal the birth of new stars. The 'Cosmic Cliffs' invoke the Romantic tradition of the Sublime—the awe of standing before a mountain range, scaled up to incomprehensible dimensions. It is the ultimate 'Biophilic' statement piece, bringing the organic forms of the cosmos into the terrestrial home.
Scientific provenance
| Designation |
NGC 3324, The Carina Nebula |
| Distance |
7,600 Light Years |
| Constellation |
Carina |
| Physical process |
"The Snowplow Effect"; Stellar winds carving cavities; Protostellar jets |
| Instrument |
JWST NIRCam |
| What you see |
Orange-burgundy nebula (bottom), Blue starfield (top), "Steam" (ionized gas) |
Editions
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Fine Art — museum-grade pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag® Metallic. Numbered edition of 50 per size, with a Numbered Certificate of Authenticity.
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Poster — pigment print on archival photo paper. Open edition.
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Framed or unframed — either edition can be framed in a slim black frame with shatter-resistant acrylic glazing, ready to hang (50 × 50 and 70 × 50 cm). Framed works ship free within the EU; unframed prints ship rolled in a protective tube.
Printed to order in our Vilnius studio on an Epson SureColor P20500 with UltraChrome PRO12 pigment inks, and dispatched within 5–7 business days. Each size is composed for its own proportions: we crop, we never stretch, and we never add or generate image content.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI, J. DePasquale (STScI). Licensed under CC BY 4.0; cropped and colour-managed for print. UniverseMuseum is an independent studio and is not affiliated with or endorsed by NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI or the Rubin Observatory.
