NASA Unveils Stellar Cluster Resembling a Christmas Tree [PHOTO]
The American space agency has revealed an image of a star cluster reminiscent of a Christmas tree. Known as NGC 2264, this cluster consists of young stars aged between 1 and 5 million years, located in the Milky Way about 2,500 light-years from Earth, as reported by NASA.
The new image of NGC 2264, also known as the "Christmas Tree Cluster," resembles a cosmic tree adorned with the brilliance of stellar lights. Stars in NGC 2264 vary in size, ranging from those smaller than a tenth of the Sun's mass to those containing about seven solar masses.
This newly combined image enhances the tree-like appearance through color selection and rotation. The blue and white lights represent young stars emitting X-ray radiation, detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The green color in the image corresponds to gas in the nebula, captured by the 0.9-meter WIYN telescope of the National Science Foundation at Kitt Peak. Infrared data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey show foreground and background stars in white.
The image is rotated approximately 160 degrees clockwise from the astronomical North, giving the illusion that the tree's top is at the upper part of the image.
Previously, The Gaze reported that the James Webb Space Telescope discovered the smallest "failed star," namely a brown dwarf wandering through space. This star's mass is only three to four times that of Jupiter, making it the smallest object of its kind known to humanity.
The cluster where this object was found, named IC 348, is located about 1,000 light-years from Earth. Scientists were surprised by the discovery, as a gas cloud in a stellar cluster with weak gravity could not have formed it. According to researchers, the brown dwarf could not have formed the same way as a planet, i.e., from a protoplanetary disk around its star.
It's worth noting that stars are born from a dense clump in a cosmic gas and dust cloud, which collapses under the influence of gravity. Over time, its mass increases until the pressure and heat in the star's core trigger a burst, leading to ignition and, consequently, hydrogen synthesis. For this, the star's mass must exceed that of Jupiter by at least 80-85 times.