Here is one of my favorite nebulae in the sky, NGC 2359, better known as Thor’s Helmet. I have always wanted to capture this well – this image is a step in the right direction. It is a tad small for my setup (a 400mm FL Canon L Lens) so there was a bit of cropping required to get any size at all. This target needs to be re-shot with the new RC 14 scope planned sometime in the future.
NGC 2359 is an emission nebula in the constellation Canis Major. The nebula is approximately 12 thousand light years away and 30 light years in size. The central star is the Wolf-Rayet star WR7, an extremely hot star thought to be in a brief pre-supernova stage of evolution. It is similar in nature to the Bubble Nebula, but interactions with a nearby large molecular cloud are thought to have contributed to the more complex shape and curved bow-shock structure of Thor’s Helmet.
This is an LRGB image with the Hydrogen Alpha channel assigned to Luminance.
Click on the image for a larger version. There are some pretty good details within the gas “bubble” and surrounding nebulosity.
Image Info
- Imaged from the KPO field in Saint Cloud, Florida.
- Camera : ZWO ASI1600MM Pro
- Lens: Canon 100-400 f/5.6L lens, set to 400mm
- Mount: iOptron SmartEQ Pro
- Red: 21 subframes of 300s = 105 min integration
- Green: 21 subframes of 300s = 105 min integration
- Blue: 12 subframes of 300s = 60 min integration
- Hydrogen Alpha: 23 subframes of 300s = 115 min integration, used as Luminance
- Total integration time: 280 min = 4.6 hours.
- Captured via ASIAir Pro automation
- Optical tracking via ASIAir automation, currently using ST4 mount control via the ASI120MM-S guide camera
- Separate channels stacked and LRGB integrated in Astro Pixel Processor
- Image cropped, stretched, and noise processed in Nebulosity.
- Final processing in Aperture