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Credit & Copyright: Hannah Rochford
Explanation:
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.
Almost Hyperspace:
Random APOD Generator
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NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: NGC 2359 - Wolf-Rayet star
Publications with words: NGC 2359 - Wolf-Rayet star
See also: