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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00:00Things might be getting all Christmassy here on Earth, but space is getting into the holiday
00:08spirit as well.
00:09This is what is now being called the Christmas Tree Cluster, a green speckled area of the
00:13cosmos more often referred to as NGC 2264.
00:18The whole thing is actually a couple of cosmic bodies, including the Cone Nebula, with NASA
00:22saying about it in a recent statement, NGC 2264 is in fact a cluster of young stars,
00:28with ages between about 1 and 5 million years old, in our Milky Way about 2500 light years
00:33away from Earth.
00:34That's extremely close in the grand scheme of things.
00:36These images were recently captured by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, with the space
00:41agency getting into the holiday spirit and animating them together, showing its blue
00:45and white lights flickering.
00:47But those twinkles are actually young stars, and the powerful X-rays they are giving off.
00:52According to NASA, stars in NGC 2264 are both smaller and larger than the sun.
00:57They say some of them are around one-tenth the size of our solar system's central star,
01:01while others are seven times its size.