Christmas is coming soon, and space has gotten festive, too. NASA had found a cluster of stars, known as the Christmas Tree Cluster.
NGC 2264 is full of stars 1 to 5 million years old. Because they are young, they give off a powerful glow. This “Christmas tree” was spotted about 2500 light years away from Earth with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. It found NGC 2264 from the blue and white lights that give off X-rays. Optical, or visual, data from the National Science Foundation’s WIYN 0.9-meter telescope shows the cluster’s nebula, which is the cloud of gas from NGC 2264, in green. The foreground and background stars are actually white. The stars from this cluster are both larger and smaller than the Sun, ranging from 1 tenth of the mass to 7 times the mass of our Sun.
There is another star cluster, with its shape relating to a Christmas wreath, is NGC 602. NGC 602 lies on the outskirts of one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way— the SMC, or Small Magellanic Cloud. The “wreath” is made out of dense clouds of dust. Younger, bigger stars light up the wreath, sending high-energy light into space. NGC 602 was found and shown with the combined pictures of NASA’s Chandra telescope and James Webb Space Telescope.
As the holiday season approaches, celestial wonders like the Christmas Tree Cluster (NGC 2264) and the Christmas Wreath Cluster (NGC 602) enlighten the cosmos with their festive beauty. These star clusters are found with advanced telescopes, and they can see celestial bodies that are extremely far away from Earth, but there are still billions of star clusters and constellations that are yet to be found.