Description

Here is Thor’s Helmet, WR7 an Extremely Hot Wolf-Rayet Star!
Also known as NGC-2359, aka Gum 4, aka Sharpless 2-298The Thor’s Helmet nebula is approximately 12,000 light years away in the Constellation of Canis Major & 30 light-years in size. The central star is a Wolf-Rayet star WR7, an extremely hot star thought to be in a brief pre-supernova stage of evolution.Note the Bubble Shape of the Helmet, WR7 is interacting with a nearby large molecular cloud which are thought to have contributed to the more complex shape and curved bow-shock structure of Thor’s Helmet.I only captured about 3 hours of Data, due to poor transparency & clouds rolling in on me…but I managed to pull some details out of this shorter exposure image, with my little 6 inch diameter telescope & a ZWO 174MM cooled Cmos Camera. 3 hours in NB mapped out to RGB, taken from my backyard Observatory in Dayton on 01-19-2018.