The Ring Nebula from Webb and Hubble
Model: gpt-4.1
Prompt version: 1.0
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 light and infrared astronomy.
Strings of gas, like eyelashes around a cosmic eye, become evident around the Ring Nebula 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 (also known as M57) 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.