The Ring Nebula: M57 (Richard Francis)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Lyra (Lyr) · Contains: IC 1296 · M 57 · NGC 6720 · PK063+13.1 · Ring nebula · Ring nebula in Lyra

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The Ring Nebula: M57

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The Ring Nebula: M57

The Ring Nebula is a so-called Planetary Nebula, called this because their relatively small, round shapes can be confused for planets. In fact they are the expanding gas shells, roughly spherical, of exploded stars. In this case the shells is not symmetric and has an equatorial bulge, so it appears elliptical as we see it. The "crust" of the shell of expanding material is denser than the interior so it takes the form of a ring with a "hollow" interior -- it's not really hollow but the optical depth of material is less than at the edge. It's estimates that the ring has been expanding for just over 1600 years. The central star, a white dwarf, which can be seen in this image, has magnitude 14.8 and difficult to see visually, though the first reported observation dates back to 1800.

The Ring Nebula is about 2300 light years away and is a popular object in small telescopes.

This image is part of the on-going commissioning process of my observatory. In particular the scope collimation is not yet adequate and close examination will show the stars have a consistent elongated shape. What's more, my auto guiding still has unacceptable random errors. Finally, the image is a bit over-processed

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Distribution of astrophotographers

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
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Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
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This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	746558
PixInsight job	10ZN9TLHZDCH4WTG2N9VO1UE15KP4OMQ
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	18h53m40s.514
RA (top/left)	18h52m43s.610
RA (top/right)	18h52m44s.928
RA (bottom/right)	18h54m37s.720
RA (bottom/left)	18h54m36s.415

Dec (center)	+33°01′54″.90
Dec (top/left)	+33°17′28″.28
Dec (top/right)	+32°46′10″.22
Dec (bottom/right)	+32°46′19″.81
Dec (bottom/left)	+33°17′37″.95

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The Ring Nebula: M57

The Ring Nebula: M57

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The Ring Nebula: M57

The Ring Nebula: M57

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