Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, JWST; Processing: Zi Yang Kong
The Ring Nebula (M57) is much more complex than it appears through a small telescope.
The central, easily visible ring is about a light-year across, but this extraordinary James Webb Space Telescope exposure explores this popular nebula through deep exposures in infrared light.
Gas filaments, like eyelashes around the cosmic eye, are evident around the ring in this digitally enhanced and colour-mapped highlight image.
These filaments may be caused by the shadowing of dense knots of gas in the ring by the high-energy light emitted inside the ring.
The Ring Nebula is an elongated planetary nebula, a cloud of gas that is created when a Sun-like star evolves to shed its outer atmosphere and become a white dwarf.
The central oval of the Ring Nebula is about 2,500 light-years away and faces the musical constellation Lyra.