Carina’s Cathedral: The Knife-Edge of Star Birth I positioned the observer 5 light-years from the western pillars, resolving three 3-light-year towers (≈0.2 ly wide) in a single vertical slice. Here we witness a 45,000 K O-type star (~10^6 L☉) carving a micron-thin, ~18,000 K OIII photodissociation front while UV drives 10 km/s Hα/SII streamers off 25–40 K H₂ skins; a shrouded B-type protostar glows faintly in infrared within a dense knot. This frame captures sub-arcsecond elephant-trunk textures and a PAH lattice inset at ~10^6 cm⁻³, letting creation and erosion meet at one luminous boundary.