Right Ascension	18 : 53.6 (h:m)
Declination	+33 : 02 (deg:m)
Distance	4.1 (kly)
Visual Brightness	8.8 (mag)
Apparent Dimension	1.4x1.0 (arc min)
Discovered by	Antoine Darquier         1779

The famous ring nebula M57 is often regarded as the prototype of a planetary nebula, and a showpiece in the northern hemisphere summer sky. Recent research has confirmed that it is, most probably, actually a ring (torus) of bright light-emitting material surrounding its central star, and not a spherical (or ellipsoidal) shell, thus coinciding with an early assumption by John Herschel. Viewed from this equatorial plane, it would thus more resemble the Dumbbell Nebula M27 or the Little Dumbbell Nebula M76 than its appearance we know from here: We happen to view it from near one pole.

Deep observations also show an extended halo of material extending off to over 3.5 arc minutes (Hynes gives 216 arc seconds), remainders of the star's earlier stellar winds. The halo was discovered by J.C. Duncan in 1937 (ApJ 86, 489).

Our color photo (taken with the 200-inch Hale telescope at Mt. Palomar) shows that the material of the Ring is exposing a decreasing ionization level with increasing distance from the 100,000 to 120,000 K hot central star. The innermost region appears dark as it emits merely UV radiation, while in the inner visible ring, greenish forbidden light of ionized oxygene and nitrogene dominates the color, and in the outer region, only the red light of hydrogene can be excited.

The central star was discovered by the German astronomer F. von Hahn in 1800, with a 20-foot FL reflector. This object is a planet-sized white dwarf star, which shines at about 15th magnitude. It is the remainder of a sunlike star, probably once of more mass than our sun, which has blown away its outer envelopes at the end of its Mira-like phase of evolution. Now over 100,000 K hot, it will soon start to cool down, shine as a white dwarf star for a while of several billions of years, and then eventually end as a cold Black Dwarf. 

As most planetary nebulae, the Ring is much brighter visually at magnitude 8.8 than photographically at only 9.7 mag; a consequence of the fact that most light is emitted in very few particular spectral lines (see the discussion in our planetary nebulae page).