Thor's Helmut

Also known as NGC 2359, the emission nebula Thor's Helmut spans nearly 30 light years of space. Its heartbeat is an extremely hot giant star thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova stage of evolution. Interactions with a nearby dense, warn and large molecular cloud are what may have contributed to its complex shape and curved bow-shock structure.

Unlike many nebula, this unusual character is the product of the central type WR star, its stellar winds, and the surrounding interstellar matter. The powerful star emits a high velocity wind, pushing matter ahead of it. This process both compresses and expands its ring-like shell. As it grows, it collects even more gas and dust from the interstellar medium. The kinematics, morphology, mass and density are clearly stratified with respect to the WR star, with three different velocity components.

These features reveal the recent evolutionary history of HD 56925, because the multiple layers could be associated to several energetic events which have acted upon the surrounding circumstellar medium. Hence, a careful study of the different shockfronts contain clues in determining the present and past interaction of this evolved massive star with its surroundings.

While most planetary nebulae contain old stars nearing the end of their lives, the central WR star in NGC 2359 is very young. Its ultraviolet photons are the fueling source of the emission nebula. WRs are evolved, massive and extremely hot – up to ~50,000 K. Not only that, but their luminosity is incredible, too. Their surface composition is extremely exotic, being dominated by helium rather than hydrogen and the stars themselves are rare, simply because they are so short-lived.

The overall emission in the nebula is dominated by the overwhelming contribution of the H II region and is characteristic of photoionization processes. The embedded, photoevaporating cloud contributes enough mass over a dynamical lifetime to account for the shell mass. In NGC 2359, imagery reveals variations in density, temperature, and ionization structure on scales ranging from the size of the nebula down to the seeing limit of approximately 2.1 seconds. The structure of the H II region can be understood in terms of a photoionized conical cavity protruding into the surrounding molecular cloud. The emission in the bubble region is characteristic of that produced in the incomplete cooling region behind a stellar-wind shock wave.