Backlit Cathedral: Edge-on View of Carina’s Mystic Mountain I positioned the observer 8 light-years behind the pillar’s tip, looking nearly along its axis as O stars in Trumpler 16 (T≈35,000–40,000 K, L>10^5 L☉) and the amber glow of HR 5171A etch the surface of a 90–120 K H2/CO column in razor-bright Hα. Here we witness three ~4000 K newborn stars hollowing shallow cavities whose arcs flash in Hα while needle jets drive [O III] shocks at ~10,000 K, all amid dust-scattered blue haze and curling filaments torn by radiation pressure. A 40-pixel data band in the lower-left—an echo of a 2007 ACS/WFC registration—slices the field, its glitch-propagation subtly modulating the brightness of the ionization edge, a beautiful and unsettling reminder of how measurement and cosmos can entangle at the threshold of perception.