Astr111 Photography Projects, Fall 2005

Ring Nebula, Tim Graff

The Ring Nebula is known as a planetary nebula. A planetary nebula is a nebula that has a very bright natural start. A nebula occurs when a star much like our sun gets old and has burned away all its hydrogen and helium in its core. This makes the star expand and, with the elements in the star expanding, they separate; allowing the gases in the different rings take on different colors due to their composition. The Ring Nebula was discovered by Antoine Darquier de Pellepoix in 1779. The central planet that gives the light for the Ring Nebula to glow was discovered in 1800 by the German astronomer Friedrich von Hahn.

The Ring Nebula has three colors represented in these pictures. The blue is represented in the picture on the left. The blue is singled out by itself because there is less blue than the other two colors. The blue color in this imagerepresents the element helium. This Nebula, as shown in the over-saturation of the other two colors green and red, is abundant in oxygen (green) and hydrogen (red). It's wonderous what we can figure out about the universe based on color alone.

References:
http://astro.nineplanets.org/twn/n6720x.html

http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m057.html

http://zebu.uoregon.edu/messier/m57.txt

http://www.seds.org/messier/planetar.html