Recently, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration released a picture of NGC 2264, a cluster of stars 2,500 light years away from Earth that takes the shape of a Christmas Tree.

NGC 2264 is made of relatively young stars ranging from one tenth to seven times the mass of the sun. The nebula around them gives the cluster the color shape, and the white and blue stars act as ornaments. NASA also took a composite image of the cluster closer to an actual tree due to the choices of color and rotation. Optical data from the National Science Foundation’s WIYN 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak shows the gas in the nebula in green, the color many Christmas trees have.

Also, infrared data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey displays the front and back of the tree in white. However, this image has been rotated clockwise by 160 degrees from the standard, making it appear like its top is at the top of the image.

The stars that make up the cluster undergo strong solar flares in variations seen in different types of light, with some variations observed by the Chandra telescope caused by different processes, some of which are related to magnetic activity in the flares undergone by the sun.