Holiday Cheers From Space! NASA Discovers ‘Christmas Tree Cluster’ Glowing In The Milky Way

The object in question is named NGC 2264, otherwise known as the "Christmas Tree Cluster," and is a formation of young stars – some of which are larger than the sun – between the ages of 1 and 5 million years old.

New Delhi: A space phenomenon is spreading some holiday cheer with what looks like a Christmas tree in the stars. NASA has found a spot in space with its own glowing cosmic tree for the holiday season. NASA said that a telescope captured an image of NGC 2264, otherwise known as the “Christmas Tree Cluster,” is a cluster of young stars aged between one and five million years old. Some of the starts are even larger than the sun.

New details of the celestial feature have emerged in the colorful image, which unites the observational powers of Hubble Space Telescope in visible light and the James Webb Space Telescope in infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye.

NASA says the cluster lies in the Milky Way, roughly 2,500 light-years from Earth. “It’s beginning to look a like cosmos,” NASA joked in a tweet about the cluster.

It’s beginning to look a lot like cosmos. 🎶

Our @ChandraXray Observatory recently spotted the blue-and-white lights that decorate the “Christmas Tree Cluster,” a swarm of stars and gas some 2,500 light-years from Earth: https://t.co/VT2WaLgp77 pic.twitter.com/HrnrmxRyd7

— NASA (@NASA) December 19, 2023

“This release features a composite image of a cluster of young stars looking decidedly like a cosmic Christmas tree! The cluster, known as NGC 2264, is in our Milky Way Galaxy, about 2,500 light-years from Earth. Some of the stars in the cluster are relatively small, and some are relatively large, ranging from one tenth to seven times the mass of our Sun,” NASA said in a statement.

The image below shows the cluster that has been rotated about 160 degrees from the astronomer’s standard of North pointing upwards. This puts the peak of the conical tree shape near the top.

In this composite image, the cluster’s resemblance to a Christmas tree has been enhanced through image rotation and color choices. Optical data is represented by wispy green lines and shapes, which creates the boughs and needles of the tree shape. X-rays detected by Chandra are presented as blue and white lights, and resemble glowing dots of light on the tree. Infrared data show foreground and background stars as gleaming specks of white against the blackness of space.

In this release, the festive cluster is presented as both a static image, and as a short animation. In the animation, blue and white X-ray dots from Chandra flicker and twinkle on the tree, like the lights on a Christmas tree.

NASA said those new stars are “volatile and can cause strong flares when captured by X-rays and other types of variations seen through different types of light.” The “blinking lights” in the video were artificially created to emphasize the locations of the stars seen in NASA’s X-rays. The stars are not synchronized in real life.

The announcement of the new image comes just weeks after the James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope revealed their own holiday discovery – a “Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster” roughly 4.3 billion light-years from Earth that’s one of the most detailed views of the universe ever depicted.

“We’re calling MACS0416 the Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster, both because it’s so colorful and because of these flickering lights we find within it,” said astronomer Haojing Yan, one of the study authors. “We can see transients everywhere.”