Hubble Space Telescope images the Ring Nebula M57

[m57hst1.jpg]
Ring Nebula M57, photographed with the HST WFPC2

Looking Down a Barrel of Gas At a Doomed Star

The NASA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the sharpest view yet of the most famous of all planetary nebulae: the Ring Nebula (M57). In this October 1998 image, the telescope has looked down a barrel of gas cast off by a dying star thousands of years ago. This photo reveals elongated dark clumps of material embedded in the gas at the edge of the nebula; the dying central star floating in a blue haze of hot gas.

The colors are approximately true colors. The color image was assembled from three black-and-white photos taken through different color filters with the Hubble telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Blue isolates emission from very hot helium, which is located primarily close to the hot central star. Green represents ionized oxygen, which is located farther from the star. Red shows ionized nitrogen, which is radiated from the coolest gas, located farthest from the star. The gradations of color illustrate how the gas glows because it is bathed in ultraviolet radiation from the remnant central star, whose surface temperature is a white-hot 216,000 degrees Fahrenheit (120,000 degrees Celsius).

Credit: Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA)

  • Original STScI Press Release PR 99-01
  • High-res version of this image
  • 1152x900 screen sized image

  • Older HST image of M57

  • WIYN images of M57
  • Three faces of M57 by George Jacoby, KPNO
  • Lowell 1.1-m images of M57 (Bill Keel)
  • More images of M57
  • Amateur images of M57, more amateur images

    Hartmut Frommert (spider@seds.org)
    Christine Kronberg (smil@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)

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    Last Modification: 24 Feb 1999, 16:30 MET