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Credit & Copyright: Steve Milne,
Barry Wilson -
Processing: Steve Milne
Explanation:
NGC 1333 is seen in visible light as
a reflection nebula,
dominated by bluish hues characteristic of starlight reflected by
interstellar 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 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 telltale hints of contrasty 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.
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A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: reflection nebula - star formation
Publications with words: reflection nebula - star formation
See also: