Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2880 mm fl) 1.28 arcsec / pixel.  The Zoomify image scale is 1.28 to 3.29 arcsec / pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ internal filter wheel, AstroDon 6nm Filter

Acquisition Data

03/01/2009 to 12/26/2009 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot3 & CCDSoft.

Exposure

Hα  480 min.  (16 x 30 min. bin 2x2)

Click here for a synthetic RGB version.
Click here for the narrow band color mapped version.

Software

• CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS w/ the Fits Liberator plugin, Noel Carboni's actions.

• CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject, combine the sub exposures.

• PhotoShop for on-linear stretching.

North is to the left.

Thor's Helmet is about 30 light-years across. The helmet is actually 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. The nebula is located about 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Canis Major.

Source: NASA APOD