James Webb Space Telescope just keeps outdoing itself with every new image. NASA/ESA/CSA team has released the latest Webb image of the famous Ring Nebula, and it’s as detailed as you can imagine. It looks like a human eye up close, reminding us that “we are all made of stars.”
Ring Nebula, aka M57 or NGC 6720, is formed by a star throwing off its outer layers as it runs out of fuel. As ESA explains, it’s an archetypal planetary nebula, located relatively close to Earth at roughly 2,500 light-years away.
Perhaps you remember the image of the same object released earlier this month. But the new ones are even clearer and show more detail in infrared light. For example, the image from NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) shows the intricate details of the filament structure of the inner ring. On the other hand, the new image from Webb’s MIRI (Mid-InfraRed Instrument) reveals details in the concentric features in the outer regions of the nebulae’s ring.
“The nebula is shaped like a distorted doughnut. We are gazing almost directly down one of the poles of this structure, with a brightly coloured barrel of material stretching away from us,” ESA writes. “Although the centre of this doughnut may look empty, it is actually full of lower density material that stretches both towards and away from us, creating a shape similar to a rugby ball slotted into the doughnut’s central gap.”
For comparison, take a look at Webb’s latest image… And then look at this earlier one taken by Hubble in 2013. It truly shows the power of the James Webb Space Telescope and its instruments, and it completely blew me away!
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