NASA releases photos of the “Christmas Tree” star cluster.

NASA researchers assembled images using data from two telescopes — including from the agency's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation's Wisconsin-Indiana-Yale-NOAO (WIYN) Observatory — to show the cluster's pine-green color. They also used infrared data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, an astronomical survey of the sky in infrared light, to animate the stars within the cluster with bright, shimmering blue-white dots. The image has also been rotated 160 degrees from the original north point to better stand as a Christmas tree.

The nebula is a cloud of dust and gas in space, located about 2,500 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros, a faint constellation located on the celestial equator. According to research from NASA. Many stars within the formation of NGC 2264 are smaller and more massive than the Sun, and some are less than a tenth the mass of the Sun.

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The formation was discovered in the 1780s by German-British astronomer William Herschel, and extends about seven light-years across. The surrounding area is also a hotbed of new stars forming, which have gradually eroded the nebula over millions of years, NASA said.

There are countless nebulae that often resemble objects or animals on Earth, such as jellyfish, owls, and even an elephant's trunk. The configuration NGC 6302, located in the constellation Scorpio, is referred to as Butterfly Nebula Because of its volatile gas clouds that resemble wings.

Scientists often study nebulae, as well as their magnetic fields, which can be generated by particles inside a star, to analyze their behaviors, specifically what happens when stars reach the end of their lives and evolve into nebulae.

Magnetic fields generated by NASA's Chandra X-ray telescopes have also helped produce similar image displays, such as a shocking purple and white hand from a giant star nebula, 16,000 light-years from Earth, that has collapsed into a neutron star, according to NASA press release.