The Christmas Tree Cluster is a region of the sky filled with bright nebulosity and sparkling young stars.
But star cluster NGC 2264 - to give it its formal name - is known as a festive deep-sky object because of its fir tree-like shape and glittering stellar 'baubles'.
And the Christmas Tree Cluster appears even more Christmassy in a new image processed in green to emphasise its festive features.
Three telescopes combined their data to produce this brand new green image of the Christmas Tree Cluster.
The blue and white 'lights' on the green Christmas Tree Cluster are young stars shining in X-ray light, detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Cosmic gas from the Christmas Tree Cluster nebula is captured in optical light and presented in green by the National Science Foundation’s WIYN 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak.
Infrared data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey shows foreground and background stars in white.
The image has also been rotated clockwise by about 160 degrees to orient the 'tree' correctly!
The Christmas Tree Cluster is located within our Milky Way galaxy, about 2,500 lightyears away.
The stars in NGC 2264 age between about 1 and 5 million years old, younger than our Sun’s age of 5 billion years old.
These young stars exhibit strong flares in X-rays and other variations seen in different wavelengths of light.
The astronomers behind this latest release of the green Christmas Tree Cluster have produced an animated version showing artificial blinking of stars to highlight its festiveness.
You can see the video below.
