​Iconic Hubble photo reimagined in high def

When it was taken in 1995, the NASA image of the "Pillars of Creation" was a stunner. Today, it's more vibrant and awe-inspiring than ever before.

For the 25th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA revisited the iconic photo of three enormous columns of cold gas illuminated from the ultraviolet emissions from a cluster of young stars in the Eagle Nebula, 6,500 light-years from Earth.

Astronomers combined several exposures of both near-infrared and visible light to create a bigger, sharper photograph, stretching wider and taller than before. The new image shows the pillars reaching five light-years high.

The high-def picture was completed in 2014 and presented this week at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle. By comparing it to the original, scientists were able to see that parts of the pillars are evaporating away, and that one jet-like feature has, in the last 19 years, stretched another 60 billion miles into space.