The Ring Nebula, M57, is a glowing ring of gas that was thrown off by a dying star thousands of years ago. When viewed through a telescope M57 looks like a tiny white smoke ring. It is about 2,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra. The dim barred-spiral galaxy to its upper right, IC 1296, is over 200 million light-years away.The image below shows some of the extremely dim, outer regions of the nebula.

For a description of the process that forms planetary nebulae, see the Dumbbell Nebula.

72 minutes L and 72 minutes RGB binned 2x2 on 2013-08-14 using a QSI 583 from northern New Jersey through an Astro-Physics 155mm refractor at f13.3. North is up. ©2013

This image shows the extremely dim outer regions of the Ring nebula. It combines the above image with an image taken in Hydrogen-alpha light.

272 minutes H-a on 2013-08-24 and 72 minutes L and 72 minutes RGB binned 2x2 on 2013-08-14 using a QSI 583 from northern New Jersey through an Astro-Physics 155mm refractor at f13.3. North is up. ©2013