Back to Glossary

Nebula

A nebula is a giant cloud of gas (mostly hydrogen and helium) and cosmic dust situated between stars in the interstellar medium. Nebulae serve as sites of stellar birth and death—including emission nebulae that glow from ionized gas, reflection nebulae that scatter starlight, and dark nebulae that obscure background stars.

Source: science.nasa.gov

APODs including "Nebula"

The Ring Nebula from Webb and Hubble

14/08/2023

The Ring Nebula from Webb and Hubble
Image Credit: NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

The Ring Nebula (M57), is more complicated than it appears through a small telescope. The easily visible central ring is about one light-year across, but this remarkable combined exposure by the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope explores this popular nebula with deep exposures in visible and infrared light. Strings of gas, like eyelashes around a cosmic eye, become evident around the Ring in this digitally enhanced featured image in assigned colors. These long filaments may be caused by shadowing of knots of dense gas in the ring from energetic light emitted within. The Ring Nebula is an elongated planetary nebula, a type of gas cloud created when a Sun-like star evolves to throw off its outer atmosphere to become a white dwarf star. The central oval in the Ring Nebula lies about 2,500 light-years away toward the musical constellation Lyra.