As with the other image of m57 this was taken after dealing with several difficulties. The LX200 claimed that M57 was beneath the horizon as was Vega the very star on which we had centered the telescope. Finally, on the June 3, 1998 we successfully took this image of the colorful nebula. Adam Maloof and Cindy Blaha both helped to take this image.
This image of m57 was taken with a 20sec blue filter, a20sec green filter, and a20 second red filter exposure. M57 is a planetary nebula which is the result of the death of a low mass star. The surface layers of the star are ejected as the star dies leaving a colorful gasesous shell expanding outward from a dense ash core. The colorful gases that form the ring in this picture are the ejected gaseous shell. The gas is actually expanding out in a sphere around the core. We see the nebula as a ring from earth because the shell is so thin that we can see nothing along our line of sight, however there at the edges the gas is denser from our perspective so we can only see a gaseous ring.
This page was created on June 10, 1998 by Michele Nichols