The Hubble Space Telescope has produced a gorgeous new image of the Pillars of Creation, located 6,500 light-years away in the Eagle Nebula.
The telescope's first stunning image of the nebula was taken in 1995, five years after the Hubble went online, NBC News reports. The new image, photographed in visible and near infrared-light using updated equipment, allows astronomers to see how the nebula has changed over the past 20 years. "We have caught these pillars at a very unique and short-lived moment in their evolution," Paul Scowen of Arizona State University told NBC News. "The ghostly bluish haze around the dense edges of the pillars is material getting heated up and evaporating away into space."
The nebula was revisited in celebration of the telescope's 25th anniversary in April.