Eli5: how do the pillars of creation just stay the same shape out in space for so long and how did it all accumulate in that area?

Question

Eli5: how do the pillars of creation just stay the same shape out in space for so long and how did it all accumulate in that area?

In: 7284

Answer 1

They are changing, the changes are just subtle because the pillars are so huge. The largest one is about 4 light years across and we’ve only been watching them for 27 years. If that longest pillar was a 1,000 pixels long on a digital photo, for it to change by one pixel would be a real-world distance of like 23 million miles.

But, as said, NASA has noticed changes:

[https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2015/10/shifting-pillars-of-creation](https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2015/10/shifting-pillars-of-creation)