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If you are looking for some extra sparkle this holiday season, look no further than the night sky. NASA has just unveiled a stunning image of a celestial Christmas tree that is out of this world.
The image shows NGC 2264, a cluster of young stars that form the shape of a Christmas tree, complete with blue and white ornaments and green pine needles. The cluster is also known as the “Christmas Tree Cluster,” and it is located about 2,500 light-years away from Earth.
The image was created by combining data from different telescopes. The blue and white stars are emitting X-rays that were detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The green gas in the background is the nebula that surrounds the cluster, and it was observed by the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak, funded by the National Science Foundation. The white stars in the foreground and background are from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which used infrared light to map the whole sky.
The image was also rotated by about 160 degrees clockwise, so that the top of the tree points to the top of the image. This is different from the usual orientation of astronomers with the North pointing upward.
The stars in the Christmas tree cluster are very young, only 1 to 5 million years old. Some of them are tiny, only one-tenth the size of our sun, while others are huge, several times bigger than our sun. These stars have a long life ahead of them, unlike other stars that are billions of years old and nearing their end.
Unfortunately, the Christmas tree cluster is too faint to be seen with the naked eye, but you can still enjoy some festive fireworks in the sky. The Ursid meteor shower, which peaks on December 23 and 24, can produce up to 10 shooting stars per hour in the Northern Hemisphere. Here’s how you can watch it.
