Thought Christmas was just an Earth thing? Think again.
Astronomers have spotted a massive candy cane near the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, 190 light-years long - that's 1797 trillion kilometres.
The tasty space treat features in a new image compiled by NASA scientists showing a scene 750 light-years across, created with a 30m-wide telescope in Spain and an instrument called the Goddard-IRAM Superconducting 2-Millimeter Observer in Washington DC.
Located about 27,000 light-years away, the cane can't be seen with the naked eye, or any normal telescope.
"GISMO observes microwaves with a wavelength of 2 millimeters, allowing us to explore the galaxy in the transition zone between infrared light and longer radio wavelengths," said GISMO team leader Johannes Staguhn.
The candy cane's staff is made up of "high-speed electrons spiraling in a magnetic field, a process called synchrotron emission", said team member Richard Arendt.
The curved top of the cane is ionised gas, which will in time produce new stars - if it hasn't already in the 27,000 years it's taken for the light to arrive here.
