The Ring Nebula M57 is a show piece planetary nebula. It is visible as a very obvious distinct ring even with small telescopes. It is also easily found lying between Sheliak and Sulafat (Beta & Gamma Lyrae), the two most southerly stars in the constellation of Lyra.

Certain stars at the end of their life become unstable, the image above shows the central star which has explosively ejected a shell of gas. The gases seem mostly to be Hydrogen,  Helium, Oxygen and Nitrogen. The gasses are ionised and  and emit light in characteristic colours.

The extremely faint outer halo glows in the red of hydrogen. Further out another shell of gas is just visible. The central bright ring is around 0.9 light years in diameter and the outer halo about 2.4 light years. It is expanding at 20 to 30 kilometres per second or 1 arcsec per century as seen from earth.

This image was taken with a Canon 40D DSLR and Stellarview 102ED Refractor at F/5.6. Exposure time of 60 minutes...15 x 4mins @ ISO 1600....The image has been cropped and magnified 100%....