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NGC 2359 is a very beautiful and delicate deep sky object in the constellation Canis Major. It is an emission nebula, which is powered by a Wolf-Rayet star (WR7), seen in the center of the bluish region. Wolf-Rayet stars are very hot and extremely massive stars, in a pre-supernova stage. The bubble shape was formed due to the strong stellar winds (very fast charged particles, mostly protons). The whole nebulosity is rich in both HII and OIII. The regions richer in HII appear magenta-red and the ones richer in OIII show a blue-greenish hue. This deep narrowband image was taken through only these two filters and shows a great deal of nebulosity not very often seen in images of this nebula. The color of the stars was obtained with shorter RGB exposures.
Additional Information
Object
Name(s): NGC 2359; Thor’s Helmet; Duck Nebula
Type: Emission Nebula
RA: 07h 18m 35s
Dec: -13º 12’ 03”
Constellation: Canis Major
Size (arcmin): 8×6
Magnitude: +11.5
Distance: 12,000 ly
Image
Date: 2016-02-15 thru 2016-02-28
Location: iTelescope.net, SSO near Coonabarabran, NSW Australia
Size (arcmin): 37×35
Telescope: Planewave CDK 20” f/6.8
Camera: SBIG STX16803 (4096x4096pix)
Guiding: Astrodon MonsterMOAG off-axis guider
Total exposure: 18 hours (Ha: 8.5 h; OIII: 8 h; RGB: 1.5 h)
Processing: CCDStack, Photoshop CC 2016 and PixInsight