An image shared by The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) set the Christmas vibe right for astro watchers. It captured a star cluster filled with green gas in its nebula making the celestial spot look like a beautifully sparkling X-mas tree. The visual delight was detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and seen via the National Science Foundation’s WIYN 0.9-meter telescope.
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The star cluster which closely resembled a Christmas tree was identified as NGC 2264. It was said to be located in Earth's Milky Way Galaxy, about 2,500 light-years from the planet. The space organisation dubbed it "Cosmic Christmas Tree" and described the stars to be volatile and different in size. "Some of the stars in the cluster are relatively small, and some are relatively large, ranging from one-tenth to seven times the mass of our Sun," NASA wrote on its official website.
The spectacular photograph suggested that the stars underwent strong flares like those undergone by the Sun. In the X-ray image, the stars were seen throwing off blue and white lights in the presence of widely spread wispy green lines. It all contributed to the look of a well-decorated Christmas tree that smiled and shined in the space.
NASA pointed out that the image was slightly enhanced through image rotation and basic edits, making it a Christmas Tree Star Cluster. "The image has been rotated by about 150 degrees from the astronomer’s standard of North pointing upwards," it said while adding further, "This puts the peak of the roughly conical tree shape near the top of the image, though it doesn’t address the slight bare patch in the tree’s branches, at our lower right, which should probably be turned to the corner."
