Thor's Helmet, also known as NGC 2359, is an emission nebula located in the constellation Canis Major, approximately 12,000 light-years away from Earth.
Named after it's intricate shape, this object was formed by the interaction of a powerful stellar wind from a massive central star with the surrounding interstellar medium. The central star is a Wolf-Rayet star, one of the hottest and most massive known, with a mass estimated to be over 13 times that of our Sun.
The brilliant colors in this image come from the nebula's composition of ionized hydrogen and oxygen which have been excited by the intense radiation emitted by the central star.
About the Deep Space Collection:
Shot entirely with my rooftop telescope from the urban skies of Buenos Aires, the Deep Space Collection features many objects observable only from the southern hemisphere.
All images in the collection were shot using individual narrowband filters which cut off most of the light and allow only very specific wavelengths to pass (the light emitted from ionized hydrogen, oxygen and sulfur), making it possible to photograph deep space objects even from the highly light polluted skies of the city.
The images from each separate filter are then processed individually, combined and mapped to RGB channels for a final color image.
Two different color mapping palettes were used in this collection: SHO, where sulfur is mapped to red, hydrogen to green and oxygen to blue in what is referred to as "Hubble Palette" processing (as used in the images the famous space telescope) and HOO, where hydrogen is mapped to red, and oxygen to blue and green.
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