Nebulae
NGC 2359 Thor's Helmet nebula in Canis Major
This emission nebula in the constellation Canis Major, actually does vaguely resemble the legendary winged helmet.
It is around 12,000 lightyears distant and 30 lightyears across. The nebula has a bubble shape, but with complex filamentary structures, resulting from successive ejections of material from the massive progenitor star, coupled with density differences across the surrounding molecular cloud.
This LRGBHaOIII image is the result of 2h of data capture, remotely imaged from New Mexico using a 20-inch Plavewave CDK reflector and FLI ProLine PL11002M CCD camera.
Date: 06/01/2021
Location: New Mexico
Photographer: Graham Wilcock
