The Tiny Christmas Tree challenge
While there really aren’t any Christmas constellations in the sky any time of the year, there’s a wonderful sign of the season waiting for you in the Butler early evening eastern sky right now!
It’s a bit of a challenge to find, but not too difficult. The Christmas Tree Cluster, which you can see with just a small telescope or even a decent pair of binoculars, really looks like a Christmas tree. I know you’ll love it! It’s easier to see in the dark countryside, but even in light polluted areas you should be able to spot it.
Formally, in the astronomical books, it’s known as New General Catalog Object 2264, or NGC 2264 for short. It’s so cute, and hopefully it will add to your holiday spirit.
After 7:30 p.m., or so, it will be high enough above the eastern horizon to start your search. The Christmas Tree Cluster resides in a very obscure constellation called Monoceros the Unicorn — which looks more to me like a ham radio tower my Dad set up on top of the house I grew up in, much to my Mom’s objections.
Forget about trying to truly see Monoceros. You don’t need to, and it’s so faint anyway. The best way to find the little Christmas tree is to use the bright constellation Orion the Hunter, perched diagonally in the southeastern sky. I know you’ve seen it before. It’s the dominant constellation of winter, containing the three bright stars in a nearly perfect row that make up the belt of the mighty hunter.
On the upper left corner of Orion is a bright reddish-tinged star called Betelgeuse that marks the armpit of the hunter. On the upper right corner of Orion is the star Bellatrix, not quite as bright as Betelgeuse. Draw a line from Bellatrix to Betelgeuse and continue that line to the lower left about 11 degrees — slightly over the width of your fist at arm’s length.
Scan that area with your binoculars or telescope and you should eventually find it. Once you do, you’ll see the cluster of 20, or so, stars arranged in the shape of a Christmas tree. What’s odd though, is that the brightest star is at the base of the tree, not at the top, where you would expect it.
The starry little tree will appear to point to the lower right in binoculars and some telescopes. However, most telescopes will give you an inverted view so the miniature tree will point to the upper left.
The Christmas tree shape of the cluster is arguably a pleasant coincidence. The stars just happen to be arranged that way from our view of them on Earth. Like most open clusters, this is a group of young stars that formed out of a large nebula of hydrogen gas, much like our sun did over 5 billion years ago. These clusters of young stars hang out together for several hundred million years, until gravity from other surrounding stars breaks them up.
My photo of the Christmas Tree Cluster was taken with one of the high-definition astronomical cameras, and it captured not only the cluster but also the nebulae around it. With binoculars or a small telescope, you won’t see the nebulosity, but you should easily see the stars that make up the tree.
The stars that light up the Christmas Tree Cluster send their tidings of great joy from a long, long way away. They’re about 2,600 light-years distant, with just 1 light-year equaling nearly 6 trillion miles.
Since a light-year is defined as the distance that light travels in one year, the lights we see from this Christmas tree tonight left those stars in about 600 B.C., 600 years before the birth of Christ. They’ve been waiting a long time for you to see them!
Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is also the author of “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and at adventurepublications.net. Contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.
