Thor’s Helmet

NGC 2359 known as Thor’s helmet is an emission nebula region in the constellation Canis Major. It’s a fairly large object measuring in at nearly 30 light years across and is over 11,000 light years away. It’s overall bubble shape, but with complex filamentary structures, comes from containing several hundred solar masses of ionised material, plus several thousand more of unionised gas. It is largely interstellar material swept up by winds from the central star, although some material does appear to be enriched with the products of fusion and is likely to come directly from the star. The central star is the Wolf-Rayet star WR7, an extremely hot star thought to be in a brief pre-supernova stage of evolution. All of this making such an iconic shape, hence the famous name. Completed March 9th of 2024.