The NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured new images of the Ring Nebula. The astronomers have been observing it since its discovery in January 1779 by French Astronomer Antoine Darquier de Pellepoix.
The Ring Nebula, also known as Messier 57 or M57, is 2,000 light years away from the Earth and is approximately 4,000 years old. Nebulas are considered dead stars. A star dies when it run out of fuel. A dead star emits fast moving gases that collide with slow moving materials which result to the formation of rings. The rings revolve at a rate of 43,000 mph and have different colors.
The latest images captured by the Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 looks like a bagel or a doughnut. With the naked eye, it may appear almost elliptical but the astronomers consider it deformed and difficult to describe.
"The nebula is not like a bagel, but rather, it's like a jelly doughnut, because it's filled with material in the middle," C. Robert O'Dell of Vanderbilt University said in a NASA statement.
NASA coordinated with other observatories such as the Mount Graham International Observatory in Arizona and the San Pedro Martir Observatory in Baja California, Mexico to assess the shape of the Ring Nebula. They all agreed that it is really difficult.
The interior ring of the Ring Nebula revealed knot-like formation of gases.The tentacle-like going out of the interior are hot gases bumping to the cool gases. It is slightly at an angle toward the Earth which made its shape less obvious before.
The nebula is expected to continue its expansion over the next 10 centuries until it becomes a black hole. The scientists believe that observing the nebula will provide us an idea on the life cycle of our Sun in the next million years.
