📌 TOPINDIATOURS Update ai: Cosmic Christmas tree: Star cluster 2,700 light-years a

Astronomers are drawing attention to a Christmas Tree-shaped cluster of stars glowing inside one of the Milky Way’s most active stellar nurseries.

Known as the Cosmic Christmas Tree, the cluster sits within NGC 2264, roughly 2,700 light-years from Earth.

The region lies in the faint constellation Monoceros, close to the Milky Way’s dense midplane, where gas and dust remain plentiful.

The nickname comes from a triangular pattern formed by young stars. When viewed through telescopes, the shape closely resembles a Christmas tree.

The visual charm hides an intense environment. Inside these clouds, stars continue to form, release energy, and reshape their surroundings.

Astronomers value this region because it captures multiple stages of stellar birth in one place.

Dense clouds collapse. Young stars ignite.

Their radiation then pushes back against the material that created them.

Glowing gas and dust

NGC 2264 contains vast clouds of hydrogen gas mixed with thick cosmic dust. As newborn stars heat up, they emit strong ultraviolet radiation.

That energy excites nearby hydrogen atoms, causing large regions to glow red.

Astronomers classify these areas as emission nebulae. Dark dust lanes weave through them, blocking background starlight and creating sharp contrasts.

These dust clouds do more than absorb light. When they sit close to hot stars, they scatter blue wavelengths instead.

That process produces reflection nebulae.

These softer blue regions trace dust illuminated by nearby stars. Together, red emission and blue reflection give the Cosmic Christmas Tree its layered appearance.

The mix of gas and dust supplies fresh material for future star formation. At the same time, radiation from existing stars slowly erodes the clouds. This balance determines how long star birth can continue.

The Christmas Tree cluster

Near the center of the region shines S Monocerotis, a massive and unstable star whose brightness changes over time. Dust surrounding it reflects its light, creating a noticeable blue glow.

Above this star, the Christmas Tree cluster takes shape. Dozens of young stars trace a loose triangular outline.

Most formed from the same parent cloud and remain only a few million years old.

These stars do not sit quietly. Their radiation heats nearby gas. Stellar winds carve cavities into surrounding clouds.

Over time, this activity clears space around the cluster and slows further star formation nearby.

At the northern edge of the region rises the Cone Nebula. It appears as a tall pillar of gas and dust with a sharply defined tip.

Radiation from nearby stars erodes its surface, leaving behind a dense core.

Below it spreads the Fox Fur Nebula, named for its tangled, textured appearance.

Bright filaments glow between darker pockets of dust. Stellar winds constantly reshape its structure.

The full region spans about 1.5 degrees in Earth’s sky.

That equals roughly three full moons placed side by side. At its distance, that view translates to nearly 80 light-years across.

The Cosmic Christmas Tree offers a seasonal visual. More importantly, it provides astronomers with a wide-angle view of how stars form, interact, and transform their environment on a massive scale.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com

📌 TOPINDIATOURS Breaking ai: Justice Department Humiliated as People Find the Epst

Many were disappointed — though perhaps not surprised — when the Justice Department’s long-awaited document dump on its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein came heavily redacted.

Or at least, they were supposed to be redacted. As documents continued to be released to the public starting last Friday, some netizens quickly noticed that a lot of the blacked-out text could be recovered with the super elite hacking trick of highlighting the redacted paragraphs and copying them into another document, The Guardian reports. A cybersecurity expert, Chad Loder, also says he was able to uncover even more redacted portions with some more sophisticated “PDF forensics,” including what appears to be a photo of Epstein’s cell door marked off with crime scene tape.

The New York Times reported that none of the failed redactions tell us anything new about president Donald Trump’s deep ties to Epstein, but they do detail how Epstein’s henchmen, Darren K. Indyke and Richard D. Kahn, helped him lure in underaged girls to sexually abuse them.

According to the un-redacted filings from a civil case in the Virgin Islands against Indyke and Kahn, “between September 2015 and June 2019, Indyke signed (FAC) for over $400,000 made payable to young female models and actresses, including a former Russian model who received over $380,000 through monthly payments of $8,333 made over a period of more than three and a half years until the middle of 2019.”

Redacted portions also detail how Epstein covered his tracks by paying hush money to witnesses, threatening to harm the victims, and releasing “damaging stories about them to damage their credibility when they tried to go public with their stories of being trafficked and sexually abused.” He also instructed “participant-witnesses to destroy evidence relevant to ongoing court proceedings involving Defendants’ criminal sex trafficking and abuse conduct.”

It’s not clear why these portions were — unsuccessfully — redacted. The Epstein Files Transparency Act under which the documents are being released, The Guardian notes, allows the DoJ to “withhold certain information such as the personal information of victims and materials that would jeopardize an active federal investigation.”

The botched redaction job is a huge embarrassment for the Trump administration, which has come under fire for its hesitancy to release Epstein case files to the public, something that Trump had earlier promised he would do. In February, it tepidly released files that detailed little that wasn’t already publicly known, and sparked outrage in July when the DoJ said it would no longer release additional files to the public. It’s backtracked on that stance, but has aroused suspicion with its efforts to censor some of the new documents. In addition to the redactions, over a dozen photos were removed from the initial release, including a photo of Trump alongside Epstein. The delayed release of the documents also missed a legally-binding deadline set by Congress.

None of this looks good for the president, but no matter. In an official statement posted on X, the DoJ said that anything in the Epstein files that makes Trump look bad are “sensationalist” lies.

“Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election,” the DoJ statement read. “To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.”

More on Epstein: New Photos Show That Epstein’s Island Contained the Creepiest Dentist’s Facility We’ve Ever Seen

The post Justice Department Humiliated as People Find the Epstein Files Can Easily Be Un-Redacted appeared first on Futurism.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com