Wednesday was the Lunar New Year which rang in the Year of the Snake.
So it seems fitting to look at the sky for today’s blog post.
I give you NGC 2264, also known as the Christmas Tree Cluster. This image was released just before Christmas on December 19, 2023, by NASA.
NGC 2264 is a cluster of “young” stars ranging from one to five million years old. These stars reside within our very own Milky Way galaxy.
The image is a composite merging X-ray, infrared, and optical data.
PHOTO CREDIT: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: T.A. Rector (NRAO/AUI/NSF and NOIRLab/NSF/AURA) and B.A. Wolpa (NOIRLab/NSF/AURA); Infrared: NASA/NSF/IPAC/CalTech/Univ. of Massachusetts; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare & J.Major
