An international team of astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured the most detailed image to date of the famous Ring Nebula, also known as Messier 57 or NGC 6720.
Hubble image of the Ring Nebula (NASA / ESA / C. Robert O’Dell, Vanderbilt University)
Messier 57 is an archetypal planetary nebula located about 2,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra.
Discovered in 1779 by astronomer Antoine Darquier de Pellepoix, the nebula is one of the most notable objects in our skies.
From Earth’s perspective, Messier 57 looks roughly elliptical. However, the astronomers have combined new Hubble observations with ground-based data to observe the nebula again, hunting for clues about its structure, evolution, physical conditions and motion.
“It turns out that Messier 57 is shaped like a distorted doughnut. We are gazing almost directly down one of the poles of this structure, with a brightly colored barrel of material stretching away from us. Although the center of this doughnut may look empty, it is actually full of lower density material that stretches both towards and away from us, creating a shape similar to a rugby ball slotted into the doughnut’s central gap,” said in the statement from the Hubble ESA Information Center.
“The brightest part of the Ring Nebula is what we see as the colorful main ring. This is composed of gas thrown off by a dying star at the center of the nebula. This star is on its way to becoming a white dwarf – a very small, dense, and hot body that is the final evolutionary stage for a star like the Sun.”
The new results on the Ring Nebula are described in three papers published in the Astronomical Journal (paper 1, paper 2 & paper 3).
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Bibliographic information: C. R. O’Dell et al. 2013. Studies of NGC 6720 with Calibrated HST/WFC3 Emission-line Filter Images. I. Structure and Evolution. The Astronomical Journal 145, 92; doi: 10.1088/0004-6256/145/4/92
C. R. O’Dell et al. 2013. Studies of NGC 6720 with Calibrated HST/WFC3 Emission-line Filter Images. II. Physical Conditions. The Astronomical Journal 145, 93; doi: 10.1088/0004-6256/145/4/93
C. R. O’Dell et al. 2013. Studies of NGC 6720 with Calibrated HST/WFC3 Emission-line Filter Images. III. Tangential Motions using AstroDrizzle Images. The Astronomical Journal 145, 170; doi: 10.1088/0004-6256/145/6/170
