I have a nursery tale to tell you. It's about newborn babies, gassy babies, babies getting so heated they destroy their nursery. But it has a happy ending. Our story begins like so many children's tales: with a picture.
OK, first, wow. That's a very pretty picture (click it for access to a vastly bigger copy). But what is it? It won't really help you much if I tell you that it's named NGC 1333 (the 1333^rd object in the New General Catalog of celestial objects, which was published in 1877, making it not terribly new anymore), but it might help more if I say that it's a region of gas, dust, and hot young stars (that phrase should up my Google ranking!) in the constellation of Perseus. It's about 1000 light years away, give or take. I've seen manyimagesof it, but none quite like this. Why not? Because this ...
