❄️ Spot the stellar snowflakes on the cosmic Christmas tree 🎄 About 2,500 light-years from Earth, stars are being born in a region of space known as the Christmas Tree Cluster. Seen in the infrared (just beyond the range of visible light) by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, these infant stars (less than 100,000 years old) appear as pink and red specks near the center of this photo, evenly-spaced in a spoke-like pattern that gives them the name of the Snowflake Cluster. Spitzer wrapped up its operations in 2020—but next year, NASAWebb is set to give us an unprecedented look at the cosmos in infrared, gazing into star clusters, black holes and the most distant galaxies in our universe after it lifts off, currently scheduled for this Christmas Eve. Stay tuned for more stellar sights from our orbiting observatories! Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/P.S. Teixeira (Center for Astrophysics) #NASA #Space #Astrophotography #SpitzerSpaceTelescope #JWST #UnfoldTheUniverse #Snowflakes