| The Perseus Cloud (2009) | |||||||||||||
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| Abstract. The Perseus molecular cloud and its surroundings contain several regions of active or recent star formation lying within about 300 pc of the Sun (see Figure 1). Roughly a dozen OB and over a thousand lower mass stars younger than 6 Myr make up the 50 pc diameter Perseus OB 2 association. Recent supernovae in the Per OB2 association drive an expanding HI supershell into the surrounding interstellar medium. A run-away star from this association, ξ Persi, illuminates and ionizes a portion of this ring, producing the California Nebula (NGC 1499, Sh-2 220). The 10 4 M ⊙ Perseus molecular cloud is the closest such object actively forming large numbers of low to intermediate-mass stars. The eastern end of the cloud is associated with the 2 – 4 Myr old cluster IC 348 that contains several hundred young stars. However, the western portion of the Perseus cloud contains the most active sites of current star formation, including the 150 member NGC 1333 cluster, the small stellar aggregates associated with Barnard 1, L1448, L1455, and additional cloud cores which are producing smaller groups of young stars. Narrow-band visual wavelength surveys have led to the discovery of over a hundred individual Herbig-Haro objects. Studies of outflows in the Perseus | |||||||||||||
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