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Click on the image for
Poster Version | Click on the image for
IRAS 4B Inset |
Located 1,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Perseus, a
reflection nebula called NGC 1333 epitomizes the beautiful chaos of a
dense group of stars being born. Most of the visible light from the young
stars in this region is obscured by the dense, dusty cloud in which they
formed. With NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists can detect the
infrared light from these objects. This allows a look through the dust to
gain a more detailed understanding of how stars like our sun begin their
lives.
The young stars in NGC 1333 do not form a single cluster, but are split
between two sub-groups. One group is to the north near the nebula shown
as red in the image. The other group is south, where the features shown
in yellow and green abound in the densest part of the natal gas cloud.
With the sharp infrared eyes of Spitzer, scientists can detect and
characterize the warm and dusty disks of material that surround forming
stars. By looking for differences in the disk properties between the two
subgroups, they hope to find hints of the star and planet formation
history of this region.
The knotty yellow-green features located in the lower portion of the
image are glowing shock fronts where jets of material, spewed from
extremely young embryonic stars, are plowing into the cold, dense gas
nearby. The sheer number of separate jets that appear in this region is
unprecedented. This leads scientists to believe that by stirring up the
cold gas, the jets may contribute to the eventual dispersal of the gas
cloud, preventing more stars from forming in NGC 1333.
In contrast, the upper portion of the image is dominated by the infrared
light from warm dust, shown as red.
