NGC 1333 Stardust
From NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day
NGC 1333 is seen in
visible light as a reflection nebula, dominated by bluish hues characteristic of
starlight reflected by dust. A mere 1,000 light-years distant toward the heroic
constellation Perseus, it lies at the edge of a large, star-forming molecular cloud.
This striking close-up view spans about two full moons on the sky
or just over 15 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 1333.
It shows details of the
dusty region along with hints of contrasting red emission from Herbig-Haro objects, jets and shocked glowing gas emanating from recently formed stars.
In fact, NGC 1333
contains hundreds of stars less than a million years old, most still hidden from optical telescopes by the pervasive stardust. The chaotic environment may be similar to one in which our own
Sun formed over 4.5 billion years ago.
