We were already dreading the day Hubble dies, but this mind-blowing new image released to celebrate the space telescope's 20th anniversary makes us wish for eternal life for the famous satellite even more.

This new gem rivals what may be Hubble's most famous image, a shot of the Pillars of Creation taken in 1995. The shot above is of a star-forming region in the Carina Nebula. The enormous pillar of gas and dust is 3 light-years tall. The seam in the middle is the result of new stars forming and emitting powerful gas jets that are ripping the pillar apart.

Hubble's capabilities are all the more impressive considering the rocky start the telescope suffered through when a defect was discovered in its primary mirror after it had been launched and began returning images that weren't in focus. Scientists and engineers were able to fix the problem, and today Hubble is more capable than ever with its new Wide Field Camera 3, installed last year.

If you've read this far without making this image your computer desktop background, click here now. We've been celebrating Hubble on our desktops for the last month, by asking followers of @wiredscience on Twitter to send us a photo of their workstations with a different Hubble photo on their computer screens each week. So far we've featured the Black Eye Galaxy, the Eagle Nebula, Jupiter and the Cat's Eye Nebula.

Send us a photo of your desk or office with the new Carina Nebula photo, on twitter or by e-mail, and we'll tweet our favorite and include the best from all five weeks in a post on Wired Science later today.

Also, check out this interactive timeline of Hubble's history, and the links below to more mind-blowing Hubble photos we've featured on Wired Science before.

Image: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)

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