NGC 2359 Thor's Worst Nightmare (Alex Woronow)

NGC 2359 Thor's Worst Nightmare

NGC 2359 Thor's Worst Nightmare

OTA: AG10CDK (AFIL-1)
Camera: ZWO ASI6200MM Pro
Observatory: Insight Observatory

Exposures:
R: 6 x 300 sec
G: 7 x 300
B: 8 x 300
H: 30 x 900 sec
O: 28 x 900
S: 84 x 900
Total Exposure time used: 37.25 hours (truly excessive SII; could have used more RGB)
Image Width: 31 arcminutes

Processing: PixInsight, Topaz Studio2, Luminar Neo, and custom scripts for separating the emission line radiation from the continuum radiation, and image weighting and star replacement

First, I thank Michael Petrasko of Insight Observatory for making the data available!

Hey Thor, What's Worse than a Bee in Your Bonnet?
The NGC 2359 nebula appears to rest in a larger field of chaotically patchy nebula, faintly radiating Ha photons. The nebula's core emits largely Ha+OIII radiation and, in this image, has an OIII-dominated blue hue. "The central star is the Wolf-Rayet star WR7, an extremely hot star thought to be in a brief pre-supernova stage of evolution" (Wikipedia). The blue arcs are bow shocks, seen from our distant perspective as complexly intertwined. They undoubtedly occupy the third dimension, and some of their complexity devolves from or projection of them to 2D. In many renditions of this image, only the left-extending blue bulge appears. However, here we can see that the bulge extends over the red central region toward the image's bottom, right, and top. The bubble is significantly larger than often captured in our images.

Other structures (red) shown in this rendering also extend farther than usually portrayed, and more SII radiation is being emitted in the outer reaches of these red streamers than occurs closer to the central star.

One must wonder if the background mottled nebula resulted from one or more earlier outbursts of the WR star.

Alex Woronow

Final
Original
B

B

Title: With Stars

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Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8228545
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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