🌫️ Nebula
Ring Nebula
A glowing smoke ring blown off by a dying star.
- Distance
- 2,500 light-years away
- Size
- 1.3 light-years across
Did you know?
- Our Sun will puff out a ring like this in about 5 billion years.
The life of a starA step in a star’s life: a shell of glowing gas
Compare Ring Nebula with the Milky WaySide by side, to scale, in the app
More NASA photos of Ring NebulaStraight from NASA’s image library, in the app
Explore more
All of deep space
The Sun
Our star, an ordinary one that keeps everything here alive.
Betelgeuse
A red supergiant in Orion that will one day explode.
Alpha Centauri
The closest star system to the Sun.
Eta Carinae
A pair of giant stars, one of them about 90 times heavier than the Sun.
Mira
A red giant star racing through space with a tail like a comet.
Zeta Ophiuchi
A runaway star, flung out when its partner exploded.