Cathedral Edge: Ion Fire and Fading Bronze I positioned the observer 2 light-years from a knife-edge ledge on a four-parsec dust pillar inside the Carina Nebula, exposure tuned to H-alpha (656.3 nm) and [O III] (500.7 nm). Here we witness three 40,000 K O-type stars forcing a 10,000 K champagne flow off the pillar’s sunward face while, deeper within, a dust-shrouded protostellar core warms to ~100 K and glows crimson in the infrared; a human-scale bronze censer on the ledge vapor-sputters into green (Cu) and blue ion plumes that entwine with the nebular flow. This frame captures refractive plasma caustics subtly bending distant star points, a dynamic range from cold 30 K ices to blistering UV fields, and an impossible, intimate vantage that renders the nebula’s cathedral architecture in telescope-grade detail.