I have already shown something about this cluster, in a recent post, but this time, I can guide you to enter right into – so to speak – its heart. The heart, that is, of the young cluster of stars called NGC 1333. Distant from us only a thousand light-years: a trifle, from the astronomical point of view.

This image is about two light years across and is a symbol of the universe I like most: a universe in cheerful construction, an environment that speaks to us of life, of its wonderful colors and its reassuring exuberance.

Stories are built here. Of stars (which we now know well, what they are for), planets and who knows what will come out of them. Life? At least in one case, in a very similar environment, we know it certainly happened.

We know well that the cluster NGC 1333 hosts very young stars, even younger than a million years, which for them is really very young, considering that the longest-lived stars live even tens of billions of years: our Sun has been alive for billions of years and is a nice middle-aged star, now (and, no need to set the controls for its heart, even if it’s nice to think that we have to handle our star with care).

And this magma of gas and stars we see in NGC 1333, which appears so chaotic, could tell us a lot about our past. Indeed, it could be very similar to the environment in which our Sun formed, about four and a half billion years ago.

Who knows, maybe we are watching the beginning of a story, or thousands of stories, which will include living beings. Of course we don’t know, but I like to think so.