Christmas is less than a week away, and even the night sky is spreading some holiday cheer with what could be the largest Christmas tree in the universe.
On Tuesday, NASA released an image of NGC 2264, also known as the "Christmas Tree Cluster," a group of young stars located around 2,500 light-years away from Earth. The image was captured by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the green nebula surrounding the stars resembled a festive Christmas tree.
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| X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO Optical: T.A. Rector (NRAO/AUI/NSF and NOIRLab/NSF/AURA) and B.A. Wolpa (NOIRLab/NSF/AURA) Infrared: NASA/NSF/IPAC/CalTech/Univ. of Massachusetts Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare & J.Major |
Some stars in the cosmic Christmas tree are only one-tenth the size of our sun, while others are several times larger. NASA added that many of the stars are only 1 to 5 million years old, making them infants compared to other stars that live for billions of years.
The Christmas tree-shaped object is too dim for people to step outside and spot it in the sky, but there could be some lights in the sky around the holidays. The Ursid meteor shower is active through Dec. 24 and can spark up to 10 shooting stars per hour across the Northern Hemisphere.
