Portal:Astronomy/Picture/19 July 2005

The Ring Nebula is one of the best known planetary nebulae, and was formed probably a few thousand years ago when a Sun-like star shed its outer layers at the end of its life. Ground based observations reveal an almost circular ring, which is the edges of a thin shell of material surrounding the inner nebula. This Hubble Space Telescope reveals the very thin gas spread throughout the brighter ring.