Explanation:
The classic appearance of the popular
Ring Nebula
(aka M57) is understood to be due to perspective -
our view from planet Earth looks down the center
of a roughly barrel-shaped cloud of gas.
But graceful looping structures are seen to extend
even beyond the Ring Nebula's familiar central regions in this
false-color infrared image
from the Spitzer Space Telescope.
Of course in this well-studied example of a
planetary
nebula, the glowing material
does not come from planets.
Instead, the gaseous shroud represents outer layers expelled
from a dying, sun-like star.
By chance, spiral galaxy IC 1296 is also visible in the upper
right of this Spitzer view toward the
constellationLyra.
The central ring of the Ring Nebula is about one light-year
across and 2,000 light-years away.
However, galaxy IC 1296
much bigger and hence farther
away ... about 200 million light-years distant.
