We present images of the young stellar object ASR 41 in the NGC 1333 star forming region at the wavelengths of H \alpha and [ SII ] and in the I , J , H , and K -bands .
ASR 41 has the near-infrared morphology of an edge-on disk object , but appears an order of magnitude larger than typical systems of this kind .
We also present detailed models of the scattering and radiative transfer in systems consisting of a young star surrounded by a proto-planetary disk , and the whole system being embedded in either an infalling envelope or a uniform molecular cloud .
The best fit to the observed morphology can be achieved with a disk of \approx 200 AU diameter , immersed in a low density cloud ( \approx 2 \times 10 ^ { -20 } gcm ^ { -3 } ) .
The low cloud density is necessary to stay below the sub-mm flux upper limits and to preserve the shadow cast by the disk via single scattering .
The results demonstrate that ASR 41 is probably not inherently different from typical edge-on disk objects , and that its large apparent size is due to the shadow of a much smaller disk being projected into the surrounding dusty molecular material .