Navigating the Cosmic Ocean

Beyond the atmosphere, past the stars we see, farther than the Milky Way, and continuing past Andromeda, we reach the real cosmic ocean.  So called because like an ocean on Earth, it is vast, homogeneous, and impossible to navigate by common sense alone.  In the cosmic ocean, an impossibly huge amount of space separates island galaxies, whose strong gravity binds them across incredible distances, dictating their course, and forming the largest and most massive structures in the universe: galaxy clusters. Because these immense structures are so vast and so distant, it requires the work of several telescopes to map out...

Imaging Spotlight: Thor’s Helmet in Space

In Canis Major, nearly 12,000 light years from Earth, lies an emission nebula that always makes me think of a particular comic book character.  NGC 2359 is 30 light years across, and is colloquially known as Thor’s Helmet. The complex structure of Thor’s helmet consists of bubbles and filaments, and is due to a series of bursts from the massive star HD 56925.  This star is a rare Wolf-Rayet star, which consistently expels its outer layers of gas at high velocities, and is characterized by its very high temperature. The blue bubble in the above image is a result of...