Daily Telescope: A colorful Christmas tree in the night sky
Enlarge / A new image of NGC 2264, also known as the "Christmas Tree Cluster." (credit: NASA et. al.)
Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We'll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we're going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.
Good morning. It's December 20, and today's image showcases two astronomical objects-the Cone Nebula and the Christmas Tree Cluster-that combined are known as NGC 2264. (NGC, by the way, stands for New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars).
These astronomical objects are found about 2,300 light-years from Earth, and because they are relatively close, they are popular astronomical objects to observe in the night sky. This is a composite image from NASA and other organizations that combines observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory along with those from ground-based telescopes. The image has been rotated clockwise 160 degrees so that the "Christmas tree" appears standing.