APOD: 2023 January 12 - Stardust in Perseus

Good morning, Rallypoint, and welcome to the January 12th edition of Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD): "Stardust in Perseus." Stellar nurseries are both mystery and fact, art and science. Here we see both art and science (although it helps to have an 8-inch William Optics telescope!). We began this APOD week with a periodic table of the elements as they relate to stardust, and here we see stardust in action only 850 light years away in the constellation Perseus. At the upper left is the star cluster IC 348 and Flying Ghost Nebula. On the right side of this image (about half way down) is the star-forming area NGC 1333.

Using data from the Spitzer Space Telescope (SSP), researchers identified a new Herbig-Haro object (HH211) in the region of IC 348, and detected sulfur, silicon, and iron in the outflows from one of the protostars that are present. Seeds of creation underway to another world.