NASA shares incredible new photo of star cluster that looks similar to a Christmas tree
NASA has released a new image of a star cluster in the Milky Way and it looks very festive.
The cluster of young stars has a very boring official name of NGC 2264, however it's also known colloquially as the Christmas Tree Cluster.
After seeing NASA's new image, it's not hard to see why it earned that moniker.
People on social media were blown away when they saw the picture.
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"Wow! That's a beautiful image. I wonder how many years it will take for the stars in the cluster to become fully formed," said one user.
Another added: "NASA bringing us cosmic Christmas vibes – now where's the intergalactic Santa and his space reindeer?"
A third wrote: "Absolutely mesmerizing! Thanks for sharing the festive beauty of NGC 2264 captured by NASA. Nature's own cosmic Christmas tree!"
The cluster resembles a beautiful and stunning Christmas tree that would be in the corner of your living room.
The hues of green are breathtaking and there's even a golden light towards the top that looks like a star.
NASA admitted in a post on their website that the 'new composite image enhances the resemblance to a Christmas tree through choices of color and rotation'.
"Optical data from the National Science Foundation’s WIYN 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak shows gas in the nebula in green, corresponding to the 'pine needles' of the tree, and infrared data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey shows foreground and background stars in white," the space agency said.
"This image has been rotated clockwise by about 160 degrees from the astronomer’s standard of North pointing upward, so that it appears like the top of the tree is toward the top of the image."
NASA estimates NGC 2264 is between one and five million years old and it sits around 2,500 light-years from Earth.
Incredibly, some of the stars within the cluster are bigger than the sun in our solar system and are up to seven solar masses larger.
Stewart Perrie