NGC 1333 is located in the constellation Perseus and is a beautiful example of a reflection nebula embeded with an open star cluster. The star in the middle illuminates NGC 1333. NGC 1333 is the currently most active region of star formation in the Perseus molecular cloud. A number of very red structures indicate regions where new stars are forming. These regions of gas are catalogued as Herbig-Haro (HH) objects. These are a relatively brief cosmic light show, they only last a few thousand years. In fact, NGC 1333 contains hundreds of stars less than a million years old, most still hidden from optical telescopes by the pervasive stardust. Recent estimates for distance to NGC 1333 are at about 750 light years, making the the middle blue part measuring to about 3 light years.

I took this image over 11.5 hours. (24 luminance images of 20 minutes and 7 images of 10 minutes of each color).