We had a window of clear moonlit sky starting around 22:30 and I wanted to get some time on Thors Helmet, my first time trying from the bottom of our driveway. However, I had to spend some time on another target until NGC 2359 was high enough, I had the L-Pro filter in my filter drawer and was too lazy to go out and change it to the L-Ultimate. I am looking forward to when I can afford ZWO's 5 slot 2" filter wheel, in a month or so. I was going to image a few stars or a galaxy, but I had a hard time decided so I gave up and spent time on M42. I was a little late targeting Thors Helmet it finally started at 01:00 I should have started a little after 00:30 and I would have been able to capture more subs so after 18 Tree limbs became a problem. Needless to say I am going to visit NGC 2359 a few more times.
NGC 2359 (also known as
Thor's Helmet) is an
emission nebula[3] in the constellation
Canis Major. The nebula is approximately 3,670
parsecs (11.96 thousand light years) away and 30 light-years in size. The central star is the
Wolf-Rayet starWR7, an extremely hot star thought to be in a brief pre-
supernova stage of evolution. It is similar in nature to the
Bubble Nebula, but interactions with a nearby large molecular cloud are thought to have contributed to the more complex shape and curved bow-shock structure of Thor's Helmet.It is also catalogued as
Sharpless 2-298 and
Gum 4.
[4]The nebula has an overall bubble shape, but with complex filamentary structures. The nebula contains several hundred solar masses of ionised material, plus several thousand more of unionised gas. It is largely interstellar material swept up by winds from the central star, although some material does appear to be enriched with the products of fusion and is likely to come directly from the star.
[5] The expansion rate of different portions of the nebula varies from 10 km/s to at least 30 km/s, leading to age estimates of 78,500 - 236,000 years. The nebula has been studied at radio and x-ray wavelengths, but it is still unclear whether it was produced at the class O main sequence stage of development, as a
red supergiant,
luminous blue variable, or mainly as a Wolf-Rayet star.
[2]NGC 2361 is a bright knot of nebulosity on one edge of the central ring of NGC 2359
- "NGC 2359". SIMBAD. Centre de données astronomiques de Strasbourg. Retrieved 5 October 2012.
- Zhekov, S. A. (2014). "X-rays from wind-blown bubbles: An XMM-Newton detection of NGC 2359". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 443 (1): 12–18. arXiv:1406.2463. Bibcode:2014MNRAS.443...12Z. doi:10.1093/mnras/stu1138.
- SEDS: NGC 2359Archived 2010-03-26 at the Wayback Machine
- "The Gum Catalog". Galaxymap.org. Archived from the original on 2013-07-16. Retrieved 2013-10-06.
- Cappa, C. E.; Goss, W. M.; Niemela, V. S.; Ostrov, P. G. (1999). "A Study of Neutral and Ionized Gas of the Wolf-Rayet Ring Nebula NGC 2359". The Astronomical Journal. 118 (2): 948. Bibcode:1999AJ....118..948C. doi:10.1086/300995. S2CID123709946.
@information from Wikipedia
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