Skip to main content

Thor's Helmet • 01/09/24

Posted by Specola Profile 01/09/24 at 12:16PM Science - Tech - Astronomy See more by Specola

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Thor not only has his own day (Thursday), but a helmet in the heavens. Popularly called Thor's Helmet, NGC 2359 is a hat-shaped cosmic cloud with wing-like appendages. Heroically sized even for a Norse god, Thor's Helmet is about 30 light-years across. In fact, the cosmic head-covering is more like an interstellar bubble, blown with a fast wind from the bright, massive star near the bubble's center. Known as a Wolf-Rayet star, the central star is an extremely hot giant thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova stage of evolution. NGC 2359 is located about 15,000 light-years away toward the constellation of the Great Overdog. This remarkably sharp image is a mixed cocktail of data from narrowband filters, capturing not only natural looking stars but details of the nebula's filamentary structures. The star in the center of Thor's Helmet is expected to explode in a spectacular supernova sometime within the next few thousand years.

Photo by Ritesh Biswas

Powered by Volunteers | 360-794-7959

Read more from Pepe's Painting LLC

Giving Kids in Need the Chance to Read
  Non-profit organization - Seattle, WA

Click the Image to learn more about us

Hunger impacts all of us | 360-435-1631

Snohomish, Skagit and Island County