For Ragnar & Uhtred - Vikings/Danes of legend!

[Andy01]

Thor's Helmet - NGC 2359
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 is about 30 light-years across.

A popular target and one I needed to tick this one off my bucket list - have attempted it several times but until now, I didn't really have the equipment to do it justice!

In fact, the helmet is more like an interstellar bubble, blown as a fast wind from the bright, massive star near the bubble's center sweeps through a surrounding molecular cloud. 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. Cataloged as NGC 2359, the nebula is located about 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Canis Major.

This image, made using broadband (RGB stars) and narrowband Ha & O3) filters, captures details of the nebula's filamentary structures.
It shows off a blueish color from strong emission due to oxygen atoms in the glowing gas.
(Text borrowed from APOD)

8Hrs Ha 3nm x 600 secs (mixed dark site & home)
3.5Hrs O3 3nm x 600 secs (mixed dark site & home)
20mins RG&B 120 secs (dark site)

Taken from Kilmore, Victoria with additional NB Data from suburban Melbourne.
Final Version Here (http://www.astrobin.com/385647/B/)
10" CF F4 scope, TAk NJP mount, QSI 683wsg8 camera.

C&C Welcome :)

Total of 12.5 hrs total integration = 36 hrs on my previous scopes!

[h0ughy]

Wow that's awesome. Impressed me noend

[Peter Ward]

Has a cool 3D look to it...real depth.

Nice :thumbsup:

[Stevec35]

An excellent Thor's helmet to be sure

Steve

[Andy01]

Cheers David! Delighted that you likedit :thumbsup:



Thanks Peter, escaped the Gong again, ‘phew! :D:lol:



Thanks Steve, it’s a familiar target certainly, but it never gets old :)

[RickS]

Very nice, Andy!

[multiweb]

Very nice details in that one. THe colors are pretty cool too. Well done. :thumbsup:

[Benjamin]

Lovely image with nice tight RGB stars. For me the yellow stars really set it off.

[strongmanmike]

Great job Andy :thumbsup: at least for my eyes, this is probably your best image to date. The processing is very nice, stars look good and the colours and overall look maintains the look of an image of a deep sky astronomical object nicely....not arbitrary art :scared: ;). You have stretched it hard to reveal the fainter extensions, so it is a little grainy at full res but at screen size it looks great :)

All that worrying about moving from a refactor, then the hickup with a silly RC :P...you now have a great fast Newtonian, that does the trick :thumbsup:

Mike

[Andy01]

Cheers Rick :)



Thanks Marc - The colours are often seen to be a bit greener in many images - which I understand may well be closer to reality for O3 - but I'm not a big fan of using green in space images! :lol:



Cheers Mike, and thanks very much for your kind words. :D
The new toys and APP processing/stacking really does make a difference - I just need to spend time learning/fine tuning to do everything justice now - thanks again :)



Cheers Ben - star colours always seem better from dark sites :thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

Nice work Andy. Very smooth.

Greg.

[marc4darkskies]

A great image Andy! Detail is very good and depth is wonderful (though a little bit noisy). :thumbsup:

I'd prefer to see the oxygen emission a bit greener and the Hydrogen emission a little redder though.

Marcus

[Andy01]

Cheers Greg :D



Thanks Marcus - this beast is like a NASCAR, purpose built, kinda ugly and loads of sheer grunt! :thumbsup:

[willik]

I like it Andy very nice lot of detail and colour.
Martin