Thor's Helmet

Thor’s Helmet is a popular target for astrophotographers. We all love to find shapes, and this cosmic cloud certainly ticks many boxes with the wing like appendages on the helmet, to the spooky eyes looking back from some 12000 light years away. The object spans about 30 light years across, and is believed to be in a brief pre-supernova stage of evolution. At its centre, an extremely hot Wolf-Rayet star is located, WR7. This incredible looking stellar object is located in the constellation Canis Major.

 

I think the object resembles a spooky alien protecting his collection of shiny stellar marbles.

 

The photo was created by combining both narrowband and RGB data. I wanted to retain the teal colour as so few stellar objects have this.

 

Exposure Details:

•Lum 65X900

•Red 40X450

•Green 16X450

•Blue 16X450

•Ha 32X1800

•OIII 25X1800

Total time 53.75 hours

 

Instruments Used:

•10 Inch RCOS fl 9.1

•Astro Physics AP-900 Mount

•SBIG STL 11000m

•FLI Filter Wheel

•Astrodon Lum, Red, Green, Blue Filters

•Baader Planetarium H-alpha 7nm Narrowband-Filter

•Baader Planetarium OIII 8.5nm Narrowband-Filter

 

Software Used

 

•CCDStack (calibration, alignment, data rejection, stacking)

•Photoshop CS 6 (Image processing)

 

Thanks for looking

Done