Resembling a nightmarish beast rearing its head from a crimson sea, this monstrous object is actually an innocuous pillar of gas and dust. Called the Cone Nebula (and cataloged NGC 2264) is so named because, in ground-based images, it has a conical shape. This giant pillar resides in a turbulent star-forming region. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope imaged the "Cone Nebula," a nebula close to home. It exhibits a craggy-looking mountaintop of cold gas and dust that is a cousin to Hubble's iconic "pillars of creation" in the Eagle Nebula, photographed in 1995.