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Radiation and winds from a hot massive star sculpt clouds of cool gas and dust into ethereal mountains.
Inside the pillars, hundreds of new stars are forming thousands of light years from our planet.
Using its infra-red "eyes", the Spitzer Space Telescope has captured a spectacular view of stars forming inside the dark depths of interstellar clouds.
Visible-light images of the same region show dark towers fringed by halos of
light.
The stars inside are hidden by dust. But infrared light coming from the stars can escape through the dust, giving astronomers a new view of our galaxy.
"We believe that the star clusters lighting up the tips of the pillars are essentially the offspring of the region's single, massive star," said Dr Lori Allen from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, US.
"It appears that radiation and winds from the massive star triggered new stars to form."
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