The pillars of creation are enormous: they are 5 light-years wide and 10 light-years high.
The Pillars of Creation are enormous clouds of gas and dust located 7,000 light-years from Earth. They are situated in the Eagle Nebula, and new stars are constantly being born from these pillars.
The Eagle Nebula itself is 70 light-years across and contains the Pillars and the Needle. There are three main pillars made primarily of hydrogen gas and dust. The pillars were first captured in 1995 by the Hubble Space Telescope and were photographed again in 2011 and 2014.
Despite what the name suggests, ultraviolet rays are destroying the pillars that form stars. These pillars may have already been destroyed by a supernova 6,000 years ago. This means we will see their destruction within 1,000 years.
Hubble originally captured the image of the pillars from four separate cameras in 32 different sections. The sections were also colored to combine different elements.
As a tribute to the telescope's 25th anniversary, astronomers put together a larger, higher-resolution image of the pillars without the stair-like gap in the upper right corner.
The Pillars of Creation are truly a sight to behold.