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NGC 1333 is a reflection nebula located in the constellation Perseus. It is a part of the broader Perseus Cloud, a vast region about 7 degrees due North of the Pleiades and whose Northwestern tip hosts the well known NGC 1499, the California Nebula. The area of this image shows three well differentiated regions: the reflection nebula, NGC 1333 itself, on the left half; an area where the rate of star birth is very high, the reddish region just left of center, and the surroundings of NGC 1333, a brownish Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN) barely illuminated by all stars in the region. The star birth region is plagued with Young Stellar Objects (YSOs) as well as really many Herbig Haro objects. These objects are bright small nebulosities that emit light (often reddish) when ionized jets from a young star collide with close gas clouds. Herbig Haro objects are short lived (some tens of thousands of years) and change with time fading away later on.
According with the catalogs of Herbig Haro objects, there are at least 45 Herbig Haro objects in this image. Some of them are quite dim and obscured by the surrounding dust, and can only be detected in the infrared. This is the case of 10 out of the 45 objects. All 35 remaining Herbig Haro objects are visible in this image and can be located with the help of the annotated images below. The objects are more clearly visible in the stretched, inverted Luminance frame, that has been enriched with the images taken through a Hydrogen alpha filter.
Additional Information
Object
Name(s): NGC 1333
Type: Reflection Nebula
RA (image center): 03h 29m 14s
Dec: +31º 19’ 09”
Constellation: Perseus
Size (arcmin): 10×8 arcmin
Magnitude: +10.0
Distance: 970 ly
Image
Date: 2020-09-23 to 2010-10-22
Location: Curiosity 2 Observatory, NMS, Mayhill, NM, USA
Size (arcmin): 30×26 arcmin
Telescope: 24” f/6.5 Reflector
Camera: FLI PL16803 (4096x4096pix)
Guiding: Astrodon MonsterMOAG off-axis guider
Total exposure: 23h 40m (L: 6h 20m; Ha: 5h 20m; RGB: 12 h)
Processing: CCDStack, Photoshop CC 2021