The phrase Pillars of Creation became popular in 1995 when it was used to describe a striking deep space photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The pillars are enormous formations of interstellar gas and dust in a star-forming region of the Eagle Nebula in the Serpens constellation, thousands of light years from Earth. At the time, Hubble represented the state of the art in imaging the universe, and the photograph a prime example of Hubble's powers.
But even before Hubble delivered its first images to humanity (famously compromised due to a flawed mirror that was corrected on a later servicing mission) after its 1990 launch, plans were already under way for its successor, originally dubbed the Next Generation Space Telescope but ultimately named for former NASA administrator James Webb.
