Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Canis Major (CMa)  ·  Contains:  IC 468  ·  NGC 2359  ·  Sh2-298
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NGC-2359 Thor's Helmet in SHORGB, Los_Calvos
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NGC-2359 Thor's Helmet in SHORGB

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
NGC-2359 Thor's Helmet in SHORGB, Los_Calvos
Powered byPixInsight

NGC-2359 Thor's Helmet in SHORGB

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Description

We present you a great classic: NC 2359 Thor's helmet, imaged in January 2021.

NGC 2359, more commonly known as Thor's Helmet, is a cosmic cloud in the shape of a helmet with appendages in the shape of a wing. Heroic in size even for a Norse god, Thor's Helmet is about 30 light years in diameter, making it more than 10 times larger than our entire solar system.

It is about 3,670 parsecs (11.96 thousand light years) from Earth. It contains several hundred solar masses. In reality, it looks more like an interstellar bubble, blown by a fast wind coming from the bright massive star in its center. Known as the "Wolf-Rayet Star" WR7, the central star is an extremely hot blue giant that is believed to be more than 280,000 times brighter than our Sun and 16 times more massive, which is in a brief phase of evolution preceding the supernova.

NGC 2359 is located approximately 15,000 light years from the constellation Cana Major. The image presented here is a mixture of data from different filters, which captured the stars and the glow of the nebula's filamentary structures. This highlights a blue-green color caused by a high emission due to oxygen atoms in the radiating gas.

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NGC-2359 Thor's Helmet in SHORGB, Los_Calvos