NASA Shares New Image of NGC 2264, the Christmas Tree Cluster

NASA Shares New Image of NGC 2264, the Christmas Tree Cluster

Source Node: 3034129

NGC 2264, or the Christmas Tree Cluster, is a cluster of one – five million year old stars about 2,500 light-years from Earth. NASA recently shared a new composite image and blinking animation:

The blue and white lights (which blink in the animated version of this image) are young stars that give off X-rays detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. 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. 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.

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