The cosmic hound of the sky ready to pounce on any prey, specifically Lepus the hare. From a mythological viewpoint, this dog is the pet of Orion the Hunter. This certainly sounds plausible as Orion's Belt points to the heart of Canis Major, the brightest star in the sky, Sirius the Dog Star.
This star is easily visible from northern skies and the upper half of this constellation is visible from southern states in America. The brightness of Sirius is so great that it has a magnitude of -1. The only other celestial object that is brighter is planet Venus. Another miraculous fact related to Sirius is that it is very close at about 9 light years away. Compare this to the Hercules Galaxy Cluster which is a mindbending 500 million light years away. The distance between these two objects is almost infinitesimal! Sirius also has a near invisible companion nicknamed the Pup. Formally this star is known as Sirius B and was discovered in 1862 by Alvan Clark.
NGC 2362. This cluster is very young at 25 million years old and the cluster includes a number of five dozen stellar bodies.
A name like this implies a sense of strength and nobility and this 'mighty' nebula definitely incorporates these values. On the outside this nebula looks peaceful and ethereal. On the inside it is a miasma of activity with violence and stellar carnage produced by a special type of star, a Wolf Rayet type. This violent behaviour includes solar winds that blow out a bubble that the interior parts of the nebula is comprised of.
Wolf Rayet stars are extremely rare and are incredibly luminous and hot as well as being massive in size. In some Wolf Rayet bubbles, the bubble interacts with the interstellar medium picking up additional gas that isn't as bright as the main bubble. This could possibly be the case with NGC 2359. Other Wolf Rayet bubbles include the Bubble Nebula in Cassiopeia, Crescent Nebula in Cygnus and RCW 58 in Carina.
Thor was a Norse god and was responsible for creating mountains and thunder and lightning. On his flying chariot driven journeys he encountered many obstacles and the same can be said of the original bubble that was produced by the winds. The original bubble crashed into a molecular cloud and more complex features and filamentary strands were created that are currently visible attached to the main structure.
Some people have likened the appearance of the nebula to one of a duck, which is a far cry from the warlike Thor's Helmet.
NGC 2207, the parts that are close to NGC 2207 are heavily reddened due to the light coming from it being reddened by dust in the spiral arms of NGC 2207.
An incredible sight through large telescopes, NGC 2217 is a highly attractive barred spiral galaxy that glows at a fairly bright magnitude of 12.
A ring of stars surrounds the main structure, this is the least conspicuous part of this galaxy.
