NASA Releases New Images of a ‘Christmas Tree Cluster’ Spotted in Space

Amaze Lab

Things might be getting all Christmassy on Earth, but space is getting into the holiday spirit as well. This is what is now being called the “Christmas Tree Cluster,” a green speckled area of the cosmos more often referred to as NGC 2264.

Transcript

00:00 [Music]

00:04 Things might be getting all Christmassy here on Earth,

00:06 but space is getting into the holiday spirit as well.

00:09 This is what is now being called the Christmas tree cluster,

00:12 a green speckled area of the cosmos more often referred to as NGC 2264.

00:18 The whole thing is actually a couple of cosmic bodies, including the Cone Nebula,

00:22 with NASA saying about it in a recent statement.

00:24 NGC 2264 is in fact a cluster of young stars,

00:27 with ages between about 1 and 5 million years old,

00:30 in our Milky Way about 2,500 light years away from Earth.

00:34 That's extremely close in the grand scheme of things.

00:36 These images were recently captured by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory,

00:40 with the space agency getting into the holiday spirit and animating them together,

00:44 showing its blue and white lights flickering.

00:47 But those twinkles are actually young stars, and the powerful X-rays they are giving off.

00:51 According to NASA, stars in NGC 2264 are both smaller and larger than the Sun.

00:57 They say some of them are around one-tenth the size of our solar system's central star,

01:01 while others are seven times its size.

01:05 NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

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