This colorful, complex object is one of the nearest and most active star formation regions in the sky. It is located 1100 light years away in the constellation of Perseus at a declination of +31 degrees.
The field of view includes a combination of reflection nebulae, emission nebulae, and emerging stars, all within a molecular cloud that spans 4 light years. The molecular cloud is relatively young, containing hundreds of forming stars. Most of the stars are hidden to us by the dust and are only identified through infrared.
I love the subtly different shadings of reds, yellows, oranges, blues and whites of the nebula and surrounding stars, together with the contrast of the dark nebula clouds. The primary blue object is vdB 17, a reflection nebula surrounding the bright star BD +30 549. The yellow objects are reflection nebulae surrounding older stars, while the red emission nebulae are outflows from protostars forming within the cloud.
There are more Herbig-Haro objects in this region (at least 40) than I could include on the annotated image. I labelled the HH objects which are the most prominent.
While NGC 1333 steals the show here, I also find the 2 reflection nebulae on the right side of the image to be interesting. On the upper right side is the yellow reflection nebula vdB 12, which surrounds the 7.3 magnitude star HD 21110. The nebula has a bit of a point symmetric shape, as if perhaps there is bipolar flow from the source star that is influencing the nebula, but I think it may just be an illusion. A different view of this nebula is seen in my
C11 image of it. On the lower right side of the image is the blue reflection nebula vdB 13, which surrounds the 9.2 magnitude star BD+30 540.
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