"Mystic Mountain", a pillar of gas and dust three light-years tall, is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby stars. This turbulent cosmic pinnacle lies within a stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation of Carina. Scorching radiation and streams of charged particles from super-hot newborn stars in the nebula are shaping and compressing the pillar, causing new stars to form within it. Streamers of hot ionized gas can be seen flowing off the ridges of the structure, and wispy veils of gas and dust, illuminated by starlight, float around its towering peaks. Long streamers of gas can be seen shooting in opposite directions from the pedestal at the top of the image. Another pair of jets is visible at another peak near the center of the image. These jets are signposts for new star birth and are launched by swirling gas and dust discs around the young stars, which allow material to slowly accrete onto the stellar surfaces. Image made in February of 2010. #

The Ring Nebula, the glowing remains of a Sun-like star, imaged on September 19, 2011. The tiny white dot in the center of the nebula is the star's hot core, called a white dwarf. The nebula measures roughly one light-year across, and is about 2,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra. Seen face-on, the blue gas in the nebula's center is actually a football-shaped structure that pierces the red doughnut-shaped material. #

The Sombrero Galaxy, some 28 million light-years away, viewed edge-on, displaying dark dust lanes that are the primary site of star formation. Although this galaxy is huge (50,000 light years across), and is one of the brightest galaxies visible from Earth, it still lies just beyond the limit of naked-eye visibility. The glowing central bulge of stars harbors nearly 2,000 globular clusters of stars, 10 times as many as orbit our Milky Way galaxy. #

Sharpless 2-106, a nebula several light-years in length across. It lies 2,000 light years away, in a relatively isolated region of the Milky Way galaxy. A massive young star is responsible for the furious activity we see inside the nebula. Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central star. A ring of dust and gas orbiting the star acts like a belt, cinching the expanding nebula into an hourglass shape. Hubble's sharp resolution reveals ripples and ridges in the gas as it interacts with the cooler interstellar medium. #

Hoag's Object, a galaxy made up of a nearly perfect ring of hot, blue stars rotating around a yellow nucleus. The entire galaxy is about 120,000 light-years wide, which is slightly larger than our Milky Way Galaxy. What appears to be a gap separating the two stellar populations may actually contain some star clusters that are almost too faint to see. Curiously, an object that bears an uncanny resemblance to Hoag's Object can be seen in the gap at the one o'clock position. The object is probably a distant ring galaxy. The blue ring of stars may be the shredded remains of a galaxy that passed nearby about 2 to 3 billion years ago. Hoag's Object is 600 million light-years away in the constellation Serpens. #

A Galactic Rose. A large spiral galaxy, known as UGC 1810, with a disk that is distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. A swath of blue jewel-like points across the top is the combined light from clusters of intensely bright and hot young blue stars. The interacting pair, called Arp 273, lies in the constellation Andromeda, roughly 300 million light-years away from Earth. The image shows a tenuous tidal bridge of material between the two galaxies that are separated from each other by tens of thousands of light-years. #

The Runaway Galaxy. Spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 is zooming toward the upper right of this image, in between other galaxies in the Norma cluster located over 200 million light-years away. The spiral plows through the seething intra-cluster gas (180 million degrees Fahrenheit) so rapidly - at nearly 4.5 million miles per hour - much of its own gas is caught and torn away. Astronomers call this "ram pressure stripping." The galaxy's stars remain intact due to the binding force of their gravity. Tattered threads of gas, the blue jellyfish-tendrils trailing the galaxy, illustrate the process. Ram pressure has strung this gas out across intergalactic space. Once there, these strips of gas have erupted with young, massive stars, which are pumping out light in vivid blues and ultraviolet. #

Gravitational Lensing in Galaxy Cluster Abell 2218. Two billion light-years from Earth, this massive cluster of galaxies has an enormous gravitational field that deflects light rays passing through it, much as an optical lens bends light to form an image. This phenomenon, called gravitational lensing, magnifies, brightens, and distorts images from faraway objects. The arc-shaped patterns seen throughout the image are distorted views of galaxies that lie 5 to 10 times farther away than Abell 2218. The lensing gives a clearer view of galaxies so distant #

The Retina Nebula. If we could fly around the Retina Nebula in a starship, we would see that the gas and dust form a vast donut of material streaming outward from the dying star. From Earth, we are viewing the donut from the side, which allows us to see the intricate tendrils of dust that have been compared to the eye's retina. The donut of material confines the intense radiation coming from the remnant of the dying star. Gas on the inside of the donut is ionized by light from the central star and glows. This nebula lies 1,900 light-years away, and is approximately .25 light-years wide, or 1.5 trillion miles. #

The Whirlpool Galaxy. The Whirlpool's most striking feature is its two curving arms which are star-formation factories, compressing hydrogen gas and creating clusters of new stars. The assembly line begins with the dark clouds of gas on the inner edge, then moves to bright pink star-forming regions, and ends with the brilliant blue star clusters along the outer edge. Some astronomers believe that the Whirlpool's arms are so prominent because of the effects of a close encounter with NGC 5195, the small, yellowish galaxy at the outermost tip of one of the Whirlpool's arms. At first glance, the compact galaxy appears to be tugging on the arm. Hubble's clear view, however, shows that NGC 5195 is passing behind the Whirlpool. The small galaxy has been gliding past the Whirlpool for hundreds of millions of years. #

The Red Rectangle. The star HD 44179 is surrounded by an extraordinary structure known as the Red Rectangle. It acquired its moniker because of its shape and its apparent colour when seen in early images from Earth. This detailed Hubble image reveals how, when seen from space, the nebula, rather than being rectangular, is shaped like an X with additional complex structures of spaced lines of glowing gas. The star at the center is similar to the Sun, but at the end of its lifetime, pumping out gas and other material to make the nebula, and giving it the distinctive shape. The Red Rectangle is found about 2 300 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros. #

Star Cluster Pismis 24. Pismis 24 lies in the core of the large nebula NGC 6357, some 8,000 light years away. Part of the gaseous nebula is ionized by the youngest (bluest) heavy stars in Pismis 24. The intense ultraviolet radiation from the blazing stars heats the gas surrounding the cluster and creates a bubble in NGC 6357. The presence of these surrounding gas clouds makes probing into the region even harder. #

The Cat's Eye Nebula. This Hubble image of the Cat's Eye Nebula shows a bull's eye pattern of eleven or even more concentric rings, or shells. Each "ring" is actually the edge of a spherical bubble seen projected onto the sky - that's why it appears bright along its outer edge. Observations suggest the star ejected its mass in a series of pulses at 1,500-year intervals. These convulsions created dust shells, each of which contain as much mass as all of the planets in our solar system combined #

Spiral Galaxy M83. The vibrant magentas and blues reveal the galaxy is ablaze with star formation. The galaxy, also known as the Southern Pinwheel, lies 15 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra. This photograph captures thousands of star clusters, hundreds of thousands of individual stars, and "ghosts" of dead stars called supernova remnants. The galactic panorama unveils a tapestry of the drama of stellar birth and death spread across 50,000 light-years. #

The Shadow of Ganymede. On April 21, 2014, when Hubble was being used to monitor changes in Jupiter's immense Great Red Spot (GRS) storm. During the exposures, the shadow of the Jovian moon Ganymede swept across the center of the GRS. This gave the giant planet the uncanny appearance of having a pupil in the center of a 10,000-mile-diameter "eye." #

A Star Factory in the Monkey Head Nebula. This Hubble mosaic shows a collection of carved knots of gas and dust in a small portion of the Monkey Head Nebula, a roiling region of starbirth located 6,400 light-years away. Massive, newly formed stars near the center of the nebula (and toward the right in this image) are blasting away at dust within the nebula. Ultraviolet light from these bright stars helps carve the dust into giant pillars. The nebula is mostly composed of hydrogen gas, which becomes ionized by the ultraviolet radiation. #

A Celestial Spiral. This unusual pre-planetary nebula, known as IRAS 23166+1655, forming around the star LL Pegasi (also known as AFGL 3068) in the constellation of Pegasus, one of the most perfect geometrical forms yet discovered in space. shows what appears to be a thin spiral pattern of astonishingly regularity winding around the star, which is itself hidden behind thick dust. The spiral pattern suggests a regular periodic origin for the nebula's shape. The material forming the spiral is moving outwards a speed of about 50,000 km/hour and, by combining this speed with the distance between layers, astronomers calculate that the shells are each separated by about 800 years. #

Inside the Orion Nebula. This dramatic image offers a peek inside a cavern of roiling dust and gas where thousands of stars are forming inside the Orion Nebula. More than 3,000 stars of various sizes appear in this image. The bright central region is the home of the four heftiest stars in the nebula called the Trapezium. Ultraviolet light unleashed by these stars is carving a cavity in the nebula and disrupting the growth of hundreds of smaller stars. #

Dust Lanes in Galaxy NGC 7049. This galaxy is located the constellation of Indus, in the southern sky. A family of globular clusters appears as glittering spots dusted around the galaxy halo. Astronomers study the globular clusters in NGC 7049 to learn more about its formation and evolution. The dust lanes, which appear as a lacy web, are dramatically backlit by the millions of stars in the halo of NGC 7049. #

A Rainbow in the Egg Nebula. Resembling a rippling pool illuminated by underwater lights, the Egg Nebula offers astronomers a special look at the normally invisible dust shells swaddling an aging star. These dust layers, extending over one-tenth of a light-year from the star, have an onionskin structure that forms concentric rings around the star. A thicker dust belt, running almost vertically through the image, blocks off light from the central star. Twin beams of light radiate from the hidden star and illuminate the pitch-black dust, like a shining flashlight in a smoky room. The artificial "Easter-Egg" colors, derived from polarizing filters, are used to dissect how the light reflects off the smoke-sized dust particles and then heads toward Earth. #

The Dusty Lanes of Centaurus A. The galaxy Centaurus A, also known as NGC 5128, lies between 10 to 16 million light years away from our solar system. This composite image shows features in the visible spectrum, as well as ultraviolet light, which comes from young stars, and near-infrared light, which lets us glimpse some of the detail otherwise obscured by the dust. #

The Crab Nebula. A supernova remnant about 6,500 light years away, centered around the Crab Pulsar. The pulsar is a fantastically dense, small neutron star - approximately 1.5 times the mass of our sun - crunched into a ball only 20 km in diameter that rotates 30 times every second. The nebula is believed to match up with a supernova observed in 1054 by Chinese astronomers. #

Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300. This galaxy, about 61 million light-years away, is just slightly larger than our own galaxy, and is considered to be prototypical of barred spiral galaxies. Blue and red supergiant stars, star clusters, and star-forming regions are visible across the spiral arms, and many more distant galaxies are visible in the background. #

Light Echoes around V838 Monocerotis. V838 Monocerotis is a variable star about 20,000 light years from Earth. This Hubble image from 2005 reveals dramatic changes in the illumination of surrounding dusty cloud structures. The effect, called a light echo, has been unveiling never-before-seen dust patterns ever since the star suddenly brightened for several weeks in early 2002. #

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Starting in 2003, the Hubble telescope was pointed toward a relatively empty part of our sky, and in a series of sessions, built up an exposure of just under 1 million seconds, capturing thousands of extremely distant galaxies, some as far away as 13 billion light years. The deeply fascinating part for me has always been the sheer number and scale of galaxies - almost every bit of light you see here is an entire galaxy full of billions of stars each. If we point an instrument at what we thought was a tiny patch of empty space, and come to discover a vastness filled with nearly infinite star systems, it brings to mind a sense of wonder on an incredible scale. Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you've enjoyed this year's Hubble calendar. And, here's wishing for a peaceful and joyous New Year. #