APOD: 2023 February 8 Б Stellar Wind Shaped Nebula RCW 58
7.02.2023

Imagine traveling to a star about 100 times as massive as our Sun, a million times more luminous, and with 30 times the surface temperature. Such stars exist, and some are known as Wolf Rayet (WR) stars, named after French astronomers Charles Wolf and Georges Rayet.

Thors Helmet Emission Nebula
31.10.2017

This helmet-shaped cosmic cloud with wing-like appendages is popularly called Thor's Helmet. Heroically sized even for a Norse god, Thor's Helmet spans about 30 light-years across. In fact, the helmet is more...

Dust Shells around WR 140 from Webb
12.10.2022

What are those strange rings? Rich in dust, the rings are likely 3D shells -- but how they were created remains a topic of research. Where they were created is well known: in a binary...

APOD: 2024 January 9 Б Thors Helmet
8.01.2024

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.

Sharpless 308: The Dolphin Head Nebula
6.06.2024

Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is huge. Cataloged as Sharpless 2-308 it lies some 5,000 light-years away toward the well-trained constellation Canis Major and covers slightly more of the sky than a Full Moon. That corresponds to a diameter of 60 light-years at its estimated distance.

Sharpless 308: The Dolphin Nebula
1.03.2020

Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is much larger than the dolphin it appears to be. Cataloged as Sharpless 2-308 it lies some 5,200 light-years away toward the constellation of the Big Dog (Canis Major) and covers slightly more of the sky than a Full Moon.

Wolf Rayet Star 124: Stellar Wind Machine
7.03.2020

Some stars explode in slow motion. Rare, massive Wolf-Rayet stars are so tumultuous and hot that they are slowly disintegrating right before our telescopes. Glowing gas globs each typically over 30 times more massive than the Earth are being expelled by violent stellar winds.

NGC 2359: Thor s Helmet
11.06.2020

NGC 2359 is a helmet-shaped cosmic cloud with wing-like appendages popularly called Thor's Helmet. Heroically sized even for a Norse god, Thor's Helmet is about 30 light-years across. In fact, the helmet...

Thors Helmet
19.07.2021

Thor not only has his own day (Thursday), but a helmet in the heavens.б 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.

Wolf Rayet 124
17.03.2023

Driven by powerful stellar winds, expanding shrouds of gas and dust frame hot, luminous star Wolf-Rayet 124 in this sharp infrared view. The eye-catching 6-spike star pattern is characteristic of stellar images made with the 18 hexagonal mirrors of the James Webb Space Telescope.