Nicknamed as “Snowflake Cluster”
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has captured a group of newborn stars, called Christmas Tree Cluster. The infant stars appear as pink and red specks towards the centre and formed in regularly spaced intervals along linear structures in a configuration. It resembles the spoke of a wheel or the structure of a snowflake, so researchers have nicknamed this as “Snowflake Cluster”.
Star forming clouds like this one are dynamic evolving structures. Since the stars trace the straight line pattern of spokes of a wheel, scientists believe that these are newborn stars or protostars.
It is just 100,000 years old and over a period of time, these infant structures will ‘crawl'(move) away from their location of birth. So gradually the snowflake design will disappear.
Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ P.S.Teixeira (Center for Astrophysics)