Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
United States Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) find ‘Christmas tree‘ cosmic star formed from a young star cluster about 2,500 light years from Earth.
The view is presented in the latest photo of NGC 2264, also known as the “Christmas Tree Cluster.” The photo shows the shape of a cosmic tree with the light of the stars.
NGC 2264 is a young star cluster with an age of between one and five million years in the Milky Way which is 2,500 light years from Earth.
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Some of the stars in NGC 2264 are smaller and some are bigger than the Sun, some have a mass of less than a tenth of the Sun’s mass and some have a mass of around seven solar masses.
This latest photo enhances the similarity to a Christmas tree through color composition and rotation. The blue and white lights (which flicker in the animated version of this image) are young stars emitting X-rays detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Meanwhile, optical data from the National Science Foundation’s 0.9-meter WIYN telescope at Kitt Peak shows the gas in the nebula is green, corresponding to the “pine needles” on a tree, and infrared data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey shows stars in the foreground and in the background are white.
This photo has been rotated clockwise around 160 degrees from the astronomer’s standard, namely the North direction pointing upwards, so that the top of the tree appears at the top of the photo.
Of note, young stars, like the stars in NGC 2264, are volatile and experience strong flares in X-rays and other types of variations visible in different types of light. However, the variety of coordinated twinkles shown in this animation is artificial, to emphasize the location of the stars visible in the X-rays and highlight the similarity of this object to a Christmas tree.
Quoted from site NASA, the variations observed by Chandra and other telescopes are caused by several different processes. Some of this is related to activity involving magnetic fields, including flares like those experienced by the Sun and hot spots and dark areas on the star’s surface that move in and out as the star rotates.
Apart from that, there are also changes in the thickness of the gas surrounding the star, and changes in the amount of material falling onto the star from the disk of gas around it.
(lom/dmi)
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2023-12-22 01:51:04
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