A Baby Hangs Between Life and Death in Space

You’ve seen this before, right? It’s one of the most famous photos ever taken by the Hubble Space Telescope: three spectacular pillars of dust hanging in space, 6,500 light-years away.

Now we’ve got a new version. Same clouds. Same stars. Same framing. Shot almost 20 years later by NASA and released this year. Which got me wondering: Has anything changed?

The newer version has a bluer tint (an editor’s choice), but everything else, including those little wisps of dust on the tops of the pillars? They’re the same. The streaks? Gaps? Edges? Shapes? Shadows? Same, same, same, same, and same.

What was I thinking? It’s been only 19 puny Earth years between photo one and photo two. We are talking about enormous structures.

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