---
title: "Ring Nebula: facts, distance and size – Krillion Space"
description: "The Ring Nebula is a shell of glowing gas thrown off by a dying Sun-like star, whose exposed core is on its way to becoming a white dwarf."
url: https://krilion.app/atlas/ring-nebula
language: en-US
---

# Ring Nebula

Planetary nebula. Depth 35 on the Krillion Space voyage, in the Milky Way.

The Ring Nebula is a shell of glowing gas thrown off by a dying Sun-like star, whose exposed core is on its way to becoming a white dwarf. It is one of the best-studied planetary nebulae and a clear example of how stars like the Sun end their lives.

![The Ring Nebula at depth 35 in Krillion Space, from a Hubble photo (Hubble Heritage Team).](https://krilion.app/assets/atlas/ring-nebula.webp)

## Fact sheet

- **Type:** Planetary nebula
- **Distance:** About 2,600 light-years from Earth, from Gaia measurements (older NASA pages give about 2,000)
- **Size:** About 3 light-years across including its faint outer halo; the bright main ring is much smaller
- **Constellation:** Lyra
- **Position in the sky:** Right ascension 18h 53m, declination +33° 02′
- **Seeing it from Earth:** Too faint for the naked eye (about magnitude 8.8), it sits between the stars Sheliak and Sulafat in Lyra, and a moderately sized telescope is needed to make out the ring shape.
- **On the voyage:** Depth 35, in the Milky Way section of the route, between the Orion Nebula and the Crab Nebula

## Things to know

- French astronomer Antoine Darquier de Pellepoix found the nebula in 1779 while following a comet, and Charles Messier spotted it the same month. ([ESA/Hubble](https://esahubble.org/news/heic1310/))
- Hubble images showed that the 'ring' is really a distorted doughnut of gas seen almost straight down one pole, with a rugby-ball-shaped core of thinner gas filling the hole. ([ESA/Hubble](https://esahubble.org/news/heic1310/))
- The colours in Hubble's view trace different elements: helium near the centre, hydrogen and oxygen in the inner ring, and nitrogen and sulfur farther out. ([NASA](https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night-sky/hubble-messier-catalog/messier-57/))
- In 2023 the James Webb Space Telescope picked out about 20,000 small, dense clumps rich in molecular hydrogen within the nebula. ([ESA/Webb](https://esawebb.org/news/weic2320/))
- Webb also revealed around ten faint concentric arcs beyond the main ring, which may have been shaped by a small companion star orbiting the central star at roughly the Earth-Pluto distance. ([ESA/Webb](https://esawebb.org/news/weic2320/))

## Sources

- [NASA – Messier 57 (The Ring Nebula)](https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night-sky/hubble-messier-catalog/messier-57/)
- [ESA/Hubble – Hubble reveals the Ring Nebula's true shape (heic1310)](https://esahubble.org/news/heic1310/)
- [ESA/Webb – Webb captures detailed beauty of Ring Nebula (weic2320)](https://esawebb.org/news/weic2320/)
- [Wesson et al. – JWST observations of the Ring Nebula (NGC 6720): I (arXiv:2308.09027)](https://arxiv.org/html/2308.09027)

## On the route

- Previous landmark: [Orion Nebula](https://krilion.app/atlas/orion-nebula)
- Next landmark: [Crab Nebula](https://krilion.app/atlas/crab-nebula)
- [The whole Star Atlas](https://krilion.app/atlas)
- [Fly the voyage yourself](https://krilion.app/d/): every right answer warps your ship one stop deeper.