The COMPLETE Nature of the Warm Dust Shell in Perseus

The Perseus molecular cloud complex is a &30pc long chain of molecular clouds most well-known for the two star-forming clusters NGC1333 and IC348 and the well-studied outflow source in B5. However, when studied at mid- to far-infrared wavelengths the region is dominated by a ∼10pc diameter shell of warm dust, likely generated by an Hii region caused by the early B-star HD278942. Using a revised calibration technique the COMPLETE team has produced high-sensitivity temperature and column-density maps of the Perseus region from IRAS Sky Survey Atlas (ISSA) 60 and 100µm data. In this paper, we combine the ISSA based dust-emission maps with other observations collected