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.
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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