                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                               2024 January 9
   The image shows a starfield with an oval shaped green-tinged nebula in
    the center. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

                                Thor's Helmet
                   Image Credit & Copyright: Ritesh Biswas

   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.

                       Tomorrow's picture: open space
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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