NASA shares photo of star cluster that looks like Christmas Tree

NASA has released an image of star cluster in the Milky Way, and it looks quite familiar...

The cluster of stars has an official name of NGC 2264 but has been known colloquially as the Christmas Tree Cluster.

And just taking a quick look at the image released by NASA, it's not hard to see how it's earned its nickname.

NASA shared the image taken by their Chandra X-ray Observatory to social media saying the stars are "some 2,500 light-years from Earth."

The stars are between one and five million years old, according to NASA, and the stars in the cluster range from having the size of less than a tenth the mass of the Sun, to others containing about seven solar masses.

Many couldn't believe the coincidence of such a festive cluster this close to Christmas.

"Amazing!" Wrote one user.

Whilst another called the coincidence "so cool!"

"A teensy bit too far away to put your gifts under it, but wow, what a tree!" A user shared.

On their website, NASA admits they added their own festive "enhancements" to the image.

The "new composite image chances the resemblance to a Christmas tree through choices of colour and rotation."

"Optical date from the National science Foundation's WIYN 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak shows gas in the nebula in green, corresponding to the 'pine needles' of the tree, and infrared data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey shows foreground and background stars in white," the space agency shared.

"The image has been rotated clockwise by about 160 degrees from the astronomer's standard of North pointing upward, so that is appears like the top of the tree is toward the top of the image."

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