Skip to main content

Webb telescope captures Ring Nebula in gorgeous detail

The James Webb Space Telescope has just served up a couple more sublime images, this time showing the Ring Nebula in astonishing detail.

First spotted in the 18th Century and located around 2,500 light-years from Earth, the Ring Nebula’s colorful main ring is made up of gas thrown off by a dying star at the center of the nebula.

This star will eventually become a white dwarf — a very small, dense, and hot core that marks the final evolutionary stage for a star, and one that our own sun will eventually follow, the European Space Agency (ESA) explains on its website.

Webb captured the images using two different cameras. The first one (below) was taken by its near-infrared camera (NIRCam) and shows the intricate details of the filament structure of the inner ring.

The Ring Nebula captured by Webb’s near-infrared camera (NIRCam).
The Ring Nebula captured by Webb’s near-infrared camera (NIRCam). ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Barlow (University College London), N. Cox (ACRI-ST), R. Wesson (Cardiff University)

The second image (below) used Webb’s mid-infrared instrument (MIRI) to reveal particular details in the concentric features in the outer parts of the nebulae’s ring.

The Ring Nebula captured by Webb's mid-infrared instrument (MIRI).
The Ring Nebula captured by Webb’s mid-infrared instrument (MIRI). ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Barlow (University College London), N. Cox (ACRI-ST), R. Wesson (Cardiff University)

The Ring Nebula, which ESA describes as being shaped like a “distorted donut,” contains around 20,000 dense globules that are rich in molecular hydrogen. In contrast, the inner region is an area of very hot gas.

“The main shell contains a thin ring of enhanced emission from carbon-based molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons,” ESA said. “Roughly 10 concentric arcs are located just beyond the outer edge of the main ring. The arcs are thought to originate from the interaction of the central star with a low-mass companion orbiting at a distance comparable to that between the Earth and the dwarf planet Pluto. In this way, nebulae like the Ring Nebula reveal a kind of astronomical archaeology, as astronomers study the nebula to learn about the star that created it.”

ESA notes that while the middle of the donut may appear to be empty, in reality, it’s full of lower-density material that stretches both towards and away from us, “creating a shape similar to a rugby ball slotted into the donut’s central gap.”

The Webb telescope is located about a million miles from Earth and recently celebrated its first year of operations.

NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency have worked together on the $10 billion endeavor, building and deploying the world’s most powerful space telescope in a quest to make groundbreaking discoveries about the origins of the universe while at the same time searching for faraway planets that could support life.

Editors' Recommendations

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
James Webb telescope captures the gorgeous Ring Nebula in stunning detail
JWST/NIRcam composite image of the Ring Nebula. The images clearly show the main ring, surrounded by a faint halo and with many delicate structures. The interior of the ring is filled with hot gas. The star which ejected all this material is visible at the very centre. It is extremely hot, with a temperature in excess of 100,000 degrees. The nebula was ejected only about 4000 years ago. Technical details: The image was obtained with JWST's NIRCam instrument on August 4, 2022. Images in three different filters were combined to create this composite image: F212N (blue); F300M (green); and F335M (red).

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the stunning and distinctive Ring Nebula -- a gorgeous structure of dust and gas located in the constellation of Lyra. This nebula is a favorite among sky watchers as it faces toward Earth so we can see its beautiful structure, and because it is visible throughout the summer from the Northern Hemisphere. It is different from the Southern Ring nebula, which Webb has also imaged, but both are a type of object called a planetary nebula.

Located just 2,600 light-years away, the Ring Nebula is a structure of dust and gas that was first observed in the 1770s, when it was thought to be something like a planet. With advances in technology, astronomers realized it was not a planet, but rather a cloud of dust and gas, and thanks to highly detailed observations by space telescopes like Hubble and Webb, scientists have been able to see more of its complex structure. The nebula isn't a simple sphere or blob, but is rather a central, football-shaped structure surrounded by rings of different material.

Read more
See how James Webb instruments work together to create stunning views of space
The irregular galaxy NGC 6822.

A series of new images from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the dusty, irregular galaxy NGC 6822 -- and the different views captured by various Webb instruments.

Located relatively close by at 1.5 million light-years from Earth, this galaxy is notable for its low metallicity. Confusingly, when astronomers say metallicity they do not mean the amount of metals present in a galaxy, but rather the amount of all heavy elements -- i.e., everything which isn't hydrogen or helium. This factor is important because the very earliest galaxies in the universe were made up almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, meaning they had low metallicity, and the heavier elements were created over time in the heart of stars and were then distributed through the universe when some of those stars went supernova.

Read more
James Webb image shows the majesty of the most massive known galaxy cluster
Webb’s infrared image of the galaxy cluster El Gordo (“the Fat One”) reveals hundreds of galaxies, some never before seen at this level of detail. El Gordo acts as a gravitational lens, distorting and magnifying the light from distant background galaxies. Two of the most prominent features in the image include the Thin One, located just below and left of the image center, and the Fishhook, a red swoosh at upper right. Both are lensed background galaxies.

A recent image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the most massive galaxy cluster we know of -- one so large that it is nicknamed El Gordo, or the fat one. Thought to have a mass of over 2 quadrillion times the mass of the sun, the cluster is located 7 billion light-years away and hosts hundreds of galaxies that are gravitationally bound together.

The image was taken using Webb's NIRCam instrument, which was able to capture the most detailed look yet at this enormous cluster and the many galaxies within it.

Read more