Lily Flower's Observatory
NGC 2359: The Thor's Helmet
This is an ionized HII region sorrounding the star HIP 35378, a WN Wolf-Rayet star, located closed to the bubble on the "fore-head" of the helmet, shinning with magnitude 11.0.
The visible nebula is part of a large neutral gas cloud, the HII region is due to the ionizing radiation from the Wolf-Rayet star. By the way, the stellar wind of this star has blown out the mentioned bubble in the HII region.
The distance of the nebula to Earth is around 16 thousands light years and its apparent size is 10 x 5 arc minutes.
Image taken during Full Moon using narrowband filtering centered in Ha and O3, unbinned, 18 frames of 17 minutes for each channel. The green channel has been synthesized.
NGC 2359: The Thor's Helmet
This is an ionized HII region sorrounding the star HIP 35378, a WN Wolf-Rayet star, located closed to the bubble on the "fore-head" of the helmet, shinning with magnitude 11.0.
The visible nebula is part of a large neutral gas cloud, the HII region is due to the ionizing radiation from the Wolf-Rayet star. By the way, the stellar wind of this star has blown out the mentioned bubble in the HII region.
The distance of the nebula to Earth is around 16 thousands light years and its apparent size is 10 x 5 arc minutes.
Image taken during Full Moon using narrowband filtering centered in Ha and O3, unbinned, 18 frames of 17 minutes for each channel. The green channel has been synthesized.