Coincidently shot the same time a super-detailed version was released by the Webb...so it was informative to compare. 

𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘢 𝘱𝘶𝘵 𝘢 𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘵.
Beyoncé 

And this would be a really big ring!

Behold the Ring Nebula (M57). A star has recently exploded, so the expanding mass is still small, dense, and intense. The nebula is 2500 light years away in the next spiral over in the Milky Way. In our sky it's near the bright star Vega, in the constellation Lyra.

Ring is the closest dying star to our planet Earth.

The middle blue & green color is from oxygen molecules reflecting light from the little remaining white dwarf found in the center. The outer red color is from nitrogen and hydrogen, ionized by the star's radiation, which makes the gasses glow.

Astronomers have known about this nebula since 1779, although they thought it was a gaseous planet in our solar system for several years. Their telescopes would not have produced a very clear image to human eyes.

And the Ring has been photographed since the 1960s. So often, in fact, that running the pics back-to-back animates the nebula's expansion. Turns out it's moving outward at 25 miles per second. The nebula is 4 light years across...about the same size as our entire solar system. In cosmic terms, that's pretty small.

If we assume gasses are expanding in all directions, then the Ring is actually a Balloon. It's just that we can more easily see what the star ejected at its equator from our view above one of the poles. Stars often wobble as they spin on their axis and the perceptible spiral pattern may well be an artifact from this motion.

Looking closely, one can just make out the outer shock waves in the blackness beyond the nebula. I might try shooting more exposures to see if this detail can be emphasized.

I'm continually impressed that cosmic events can take on so many shapes and colors. There's no end of fascination in the life of the universe!

All thoughts scribbled down to Bill Evans jazz piano tune 𝘐 𝘍𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘐𝘯 𝘓𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘛𝘰𝘰 𝘌𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘭𝘺, from the album 𝘔𝘰𝘰𝘯 𝘉𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴.