- NASA has released a new image of the star-forming region 2,500 light-years from Earth
- The Christmas tree cluster has been colored to look like a real Christmas tree
- READ MORE: James Webb snaps photo of galaxy cluster with flickering lights
NASA has discovered a Christmas tree that is out of this world.
The American space agency released a stunning image of the “Christmas Tree Cluster” – a huge collection of young stars 2,500 light-years from Earth.
The photo was created to look like a Christmas tree, with the young stars no more than five million years old colored in blue and white – most of the glowing plasma balls are between 1 billion and 10 billion years old.
Astronomers also colored the gas in the nebula green to mimic that of a tree's pine needles, and rotated the image clockwise so that the top of the tree faces the top of the image.
Although the image has been edited, NASA said it is the latest image of the Christmas tree pile taken by its Chandra Observatory.
The photo was created to look like a Christmas tree, with the young stars no more than five million years old colored in blue and white – most of the glowing plasma balls are between 1 billion and 10 billion years old
The space telescope is designed to detect X-ray emissions from very hot regions of the universe such as exploded stars, galaxies and matter around black holes.
Chandra's unique ability to resolve and locate X-ray sources enabled the identification of hundreds of very young stars and those still forming, called “protostars.”
The Christmas tree cluster gets its name not from its shape, but from the brightness of its members – they light up the surrounding area with the glow of a lighted Christmas tree display.
The cosmic tree is located within NGC 2264 in the dark constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn, not far from the more famous figure Orion the Hunter.
Although the image has been edited, NASA said it is the latest image of the Christmas tree pile taken by its Chandra Observatory
It is a massive multiple star system that was formed from dust and gas just a few million years ago.
The young stars in this region are volatile and are subject to strong X-ray bursts and other types of variations observed in different types of light
“This new composite image enhances the resemblance to a Christmas tree through the choice of color and rotation,” NASA said.
“However, the coordinated, blinking variations shown in the animation are artificial to highlight the positions of the stars visible in X-rays and to emphasize this object's resemblance to a Christmas tree.”
“In reality, the variations of the stars are not synchronized.”
The image was rotated about 150 degrees from the astronomer's upward north direction.
“This rotation brings the tip of the roughly conical tree shape near the top of the image, but does not take into account the small bare patch in the tree's branches at the bottom right, which should probably be rotated toward the corner,” NASA said.