Observation by Richard Francis: Thor's Helmet

Uploaded by

Richard Francis

Observer

Richard Francis

Observed

2021 Mar 02 - 15:53

Uploaded

2024 Jun 02 - 15:56

Objects

The Duck Nebula (NGC2359)

Planetarium overlay

Enable overlay
Show stars
Label stars
Show deep sky objects
Label deep sky objects
Show constellation boundaries
Show constellation sticks
Show constellation labels
Show RA/Dec grid

Constellation

Canis Major

Field centre

RA: 07^h18^m
Dec: -13°14'
Position angle: -0°09'

Field size

1°03' × 1°01'

Equipment

Officina Stellare UCRC360
Paramount ME II
FLI Kepler 4040

Exposure

~24 hours of 60s RGB frames + 300s SHO frames

Location

La Romieu, SW France

Target name

NGC 2359, Thor's Helmet

Title

Thor's Helmet

About this image

I've had these data on disk for a long time (since spring 2021), being a bit put off by having captured the data at two different temperatures (-10C and -15C) so that preprocessing would have to be done separately before combining later. And there are a lot of data -- about 24 hours worth, split into 300s exposures for the narrow band and 60s for the RGB stars.

Still, after about a day's work it has been worth it.

This is NGC 2359, also known as Thor's Helmet. I can see why, but in this orientation it looks more like a man reaching his arms out. I used the HOO palette -- I did have some SII data but there is little signal.

It is a fascinating object: The Annals of the Deep Sky (Vol 3) devotes 7 pages to it, summarising it as "Wolf-Rayet-blown bubble embedded in a diffuse H II region". The Wolf-Rayet star in question is visible as the bright star a bit to the upper-right of the centre of the bubble in this image. It is in last stage before it becomes a supernova. It's about 12000 light years distant so we should be out of harms way !

Files associated with this observation

ID-2021-05_NGC2359_Thors_Helmet_Rev1_reduced.jpg (2.3 MB)

Like this image

Simon Paul Davis, Dominic Ford, Callum Potter, Martina McGovern

Copyright of all images and other observations submitted to the BAA remains with the owner of the work. Reproduction of work by third parties is expressly forbidden without the consent of the copyright holder. By submitting images to this online gallery, you grant the BAA permission to reproduce them in any of our publications.

Registered charity no. 210769
Registered company no. 117572

For more information including contact details, click here.

Our Terms of Use are here.

Our Privacy Policy is here.