Mount Doom doesn't lay inside the heart of the black land of Mordor after all — it's in a stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, judging from a new image from the Hubble Space Telescope.
According to the Hubble Site, the image is even more violent than it appears:
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, which is even more dramatic than fiction, captures the chaotic activity atop a pillar of gas and dust, three light-years tall, which is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being assaulted from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks.
This turbulent cosmic pinnacle lies within a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7500 light-years away in the southern constellation of Carina. The image celebrates the 20th anniversary of Hubble's launch and deployment into an orbit around the Earth.
More info, and super high res version, at the link. [Hubble Site]