The Ring Nebula

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.

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.