Starship Asterisk*

Thor's Helmet

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.

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You can see the wings of the helmet, the skin cape and the dreadlocks (in red). Inside the bubble you can see the chaos of emissions from the Wolf-Rayet star

You can see a lot of images in this photo! I can see a man; or a deer;
a dog; and etc! JMO! Aw kitty; what are you wearing!

That's a very fine image of the nebular chaos and maelstrom created by the fury of the central Wolf Rayet star, WR 7 or HD 56925.

Ann

Never has an APOD spoken to my weak penchant for pareidolia as this image has. May I present the eidolon of the irate, screaming, flailing, Humpty Dumpty of your nightmares:

Betelgeuse has mass of 16.5-19 M☉
WR 7 of Thor's Helmet has mass of 13 M☉ which is less than Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse has 0 to 100,000 years left before going SuperNova
WR 7 of Thor's Helmet has just "few thousand years" left before going SuperNova

Is there a connection between the time left and the bubble helmet blown?