The area between the Pleiades and the southern reaches of Perseus is interesting because of the dust clouds and small nebulae dotting the area. We don't see any prominent open clusters here, which is somewhat surprising since we are generally looking along the plane of the galaxy here. The stars of southern Perseus comprise the Perseus OB2 Association, and the entire area is clearly overlaid by dark clouds that obscure the stars behind it. This is known as the Perseus molecular cloud. The only deep sky objects visible on the image are NGC 1333, a reflection nebula, and the small open cluster NGC 1348 near the star Omicron Persei. Unannotated image. |