18th July 2021
By: Haris Ahmad
Nebulae are giant clouds of gas and dust in space. Some of them may have formed due to the explosion of stars into supernovae. Nebulae are the regions where stars form and the Sun is also formed from the elementary particles in a Nebula.
The
Ring Nebula, also known as M57 is a planetary nebula that was created due to
the explosion of a sun-like star into a Supernova. What now remains of that Star
is a tiny white dot in the center of the nebula, which is a type of celestial
body we know as a white dwarf.
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| https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180417.html |
The
Ring Nebula exists approximately 2,000 light-years away from us, in a
constellation in the sky known as Constellation Lyra.
This Nebula is facing the Earth in such a way
that astronomers can see the ring clearly shaped towards our view.
The
blue gas we see in the nebula’s center is a football-shaped structure seen in
the view piercing the red, circular-shaped material. The inner perimeter of the
ring displays an elaborate structure of dark, irregular lumps of dense gas that
the stellar winds have failed to blow away yet from the Nebula’s perimeter. The
lumps and their tails look like bars in a bicycle.
This
Nebula was discovered by a French astronomer named as Antoine Darquier de
Pellepoix in 1779, but in fact, according to
some sources, he independently rediscovered it after reading a report by
Charles Messier regarding Messier's own observations of Comet Bode.
