This proved to be very challenging to process. This consists of three years of data; 2017, 2019 and more Ha & OIII I just captured recently. There are three different levels of stretches on the Ring Nebula itself combined in Photoshop and then added in LRGB data on top of that. It was rather hard to get the three different stretches just right where they looked natural to layer in together. I really liked how the core turned out given my 0.68"/pixel image scale, but I wish I got a little more detail around the outer shell. The outer shell was still pretty noisy and had to contend with that.

The Ring Nebula, M57, discovered by the French astronomer Charles Messier while searching for comets in late January 1779, is a planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Lyra. Such objects are formed when a shell of ionized gas is expelled into the surrounding interstellar medium by a red giant star, which was passing through the last stage in its evolution before becoming a white dwarf. M57 is 2,300 light-years from Earth. Photographs taken over a period of 50 years show the rate of nebula expansion is roughly 1 arcsecond per century. The interior parts of this nebula have a blue-green tinge that is caused by doubly ionized oxygen.