APOD: 2005 March 11 - Infrared Ring Nebula (original) (raw)

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos!Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2005 March 11

Infrared Ring Nebula
Credit: J. Hora (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA) (SSC/Caltech), JPL-Caltech, NASA

Explanation: The classic appearance of the popularRing Nebula(aka M57) is understood to be due to perspective - our view from planet Earth looks down the center of a roughly barrel-shaped cloud of gas. But graceful looping structures are seen to extend even beyond the Ring Nebula's familiar central regions in thisfalse-color infrared imagefrom the Spitzer Space Telescope. Of course in this well-studied example of aplanetary nebula, the glowing materialdoes not come from planets. Instead, the gaseous shroud represents outer layers expelled from a dying, sun-like star. By chance, spiral galaxy IC 1296 is also visible in the upper right of this Spitzer view toward theconstellation Lyra. The central ring of the Ring Nebula is about one light-year across and 2,000 light-years away. However, galaxy IC 1296much bigger and hence farther away ... about 200 million light-years distant.

Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend

Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff(MTU) &Jerry Bonnell(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA atNASA /GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.