  Recently, the Spitzer Space Telescope discovered L1014-IRS, a mid-infrared
source with protostellar colors, toward the heretofore "starless" core L1014.
We present deep near-infrared observations that show a scattered light nebula
extending from L1014-IRS. This nebula resembles those typically associated with
protostars and young stellar objects, tracing envelope cavities presumably
evacuated by an outflow. The northern lobe of the nebula has an opening angle
of ~100 degrees, while the southern lobe is barely detected. Its morphology
suggests that the bipolar cavity and inferred protostellar disk is not inclined
more than 30 degrees from an edge-on orientation. The nebula extends at least
8" from the source at Ks, strongly suggesting that L1014-IRS is embedded within
L1014 at a distance of 200 pc rather than in a more distant cloud associated
with the Perseus arm at 2.6 kpc. In this case, the apparently low luminosity of
L1014-IRS, 0.090 Lsun, is consistent with it having a substellar mass. However,
if L1014-IRS is obscured by a circumstellar disk, its luminosity and inferred
mass may be greater. Using near-infrared colors of background stars, we
investigate characteristics of the L1014 molecular cloud core. We determine a
mass of 3.6 Msun for regions of the core with Av > 2 magnitudes. A comparison
of the radial extinction profile of L1014 with other cores suggests that L1014
may be among the most centrally condensed cores known, perhaps indicative of
the earliest stages of brown dwarf or star formation processes.
