Categories: Where In the Universe?

Where In The Universe #35

Are you ready for another Where In The Universe Challenge? Take a look and see if you can name where in the Universe this image is from. Give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft responsible for the image. As usual, we’ll provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until tomorrow. This gives you a chance to mull over the image, drink some eggnog, and provide your answer/guess in the comment section — if you dare! Check back tomorrow on this same post to see how you did. Good luck and enjoy the holidays!

UPDATE (12/25): The answer has now been posted below. If you haven’t made your guess yet, no peeking before you do!!

In this holiday edition of Where In The Universe, newborn stars, hidden behind thick dust in visible light, are revealed in infrared in this image of a part of the Christmas Tree Cluster from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Two instruments created this image, Spitzer’s Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) and Multiband Imaging Photometer (MIPS) instruments.

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Astronomers nicknamed this the “Snowflake Cluster,” the stars appear to have formed in regularly spaced intervals along linear structures in a configuration that resembles the pattern of a snowflake.

More info on this image.

Best wishes for the merriest of whatever holiday you may celebrate.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/