Object:This is the Ring Nebula (aka Messier 57, M57 or NGC 6720), a planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Lyra. Such objects are formed when a shell of ionized gas is expelled into the surrounding interstellar medium by a red giant star, which was passing through the last stage in its evolution before becoming a white dwarf.
It is 2300 light years away and gives you an idea of what our sun will look like in 4-5 billion years. When that happens, the outer envelope of dust and gas ejected by our dying sun will swell to become a red giant extending past the orbit of Venus and Earth, and possibly Mars. What is left of the sun will heat up and shrink down to a white dwarf about the size of Earth but much denser. The nebula will be visible for 10,000 to 20,000 years — a blink of an eye on the cosmic timescale. Its gas and dust will slowly disperse, eventually providing the raw material for a new generation of stars and planets.
Taken: May 19, 2019
Telescope: Astro-Tech 14” RC
Mount: Paramount ME II unguided
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro (cooled to -15C; unity gain) Bin 2×2.
Focuser: Moonlite Nitecrawler
Filters used: Luminance, Red, Green, Blue, H-a, O-III: and S-II on a ZWO 8 position filter wheel
Exposures: Lum:6x60sec; RGBH-a & O-III: 5×60 sec; S-II: 3×60 sec., for a total exposure time of 34 minutes; calibrated with 100 bias frames, 25 dark frames, 32 flat frames with 32 dark-flats
Seeing Conditions:
Processed with PixInsight and Photoshop CC 2019