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Showing posts with the label Christmas Tree Cluster

CHRISTMAS MEALS AND JOY

Did you know that  our Milky Way Galaxy has a Christmas tree ?  New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (NGC) 2264 was discovered in 1784 by William Herschel, and is located 2500 light years away from Earth.  These stars are only between one and five million years old.  Some are seven times the size of our Sun, which is 4.6 billion years old.   There is a smaller cluster within NGC2264 called the Snowflake Cluster ( photo to the right ). The entire grouping is known as the Christmas Tree Cluster.  NASA compiled renderings from multiple sources, their Chandra Observatory and NSF's NOIRLab Observatory, producing an animated image with the assistance of the Two Micron All Sky Survey. We are dining well this holiday season.  Here a dinner we had at the home of a golf colleague, Tommy and his wife Gail.  4,000 square feet home with a view from Diamond Head across the whole Waialae Golf Course, where the Sony Open is held, all the way to Koko Head.  You can see the coconut