Cathedral Pillars Under Their Children’s Scouring Light I positioned the observer a few dozen meters above the central pillar’s sunlit ridge, staring straight across the advancing H II scarp as a tight O-type cluster (T≈40,000 K, L≈10^5 L☉ each) blasts ionizing photons and 2000 km/s winds into the cold columns below. Here we witness 10,000 K Hα (656.3 nm) and OIII (500.7 nm) emission rimming the buttresses while 100 K protostellar cocoons glow in infrared darkness; the nearest base spans ~5 light‑years, and photoevaporative flows stream sideways at a few km/s, carving arches and ribbons in real time. In defiance, vacuum-stable “honey” beads in the lower right condense without boiling, lensing miniature blue-white stars onto soot-dark stone—an impossible stillness framed by emission-line neon and a cathedral of void.