{"id":7307,"date":"2022-07-13T04:56:31","date_gmt":"2022-07-13T04:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/?p=7307"},"modified":"2022-07-13T04:56:36","modified_gmt":"2022-07-13T04:56:36","slug":"webb-s-ring-20220713","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/webb-s-ring-20220713\/","title":{"rendered":"Webb&#8217;s Southern Ring Nebula"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Webb returned data to create two images of The Southern Ring Nebula.<br \/>\nThese images were created using data from the NIRCam (Left) and MIRI (Right) Instruments<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"section-header__title\"><\/h2>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/webbtelescope.org\/contents\/media\/images\/2022\/033\/01G709QXZPFH83NZFAFP66WVCZ\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/stsci-opo.org\/STScI-01G709RFDHBXFGJ68SZXHNBAVM.png\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" \/><\/a>\n<p>The Southern Ring Nebula (NGC 3132) is a bright and extensively studied planetary nebula in the southern constellation of Vela.<br \/>\nIts distance from Earth is estimated at about 2,000 light-years, so is well within our own Milky Way.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the name, this nebula has nothing to do with planets.<br \/>\nThese clouds of gas and dust were first called Planetary Nebulae when early observers thought they looks like faint planetary disks.<\/p>\n<p>They are in fact stars at the end of their lives, struggling to keep burning.<br \/>\nAs a result they are throwing out their outer atmospheres to try and keep their internal nuclear fusion going.<br \/>\nThey will eventually lose that battle and expand into a red giant star, before shrinking and fading.<br \/>\nThis will be the fate of our very own Sun in some 5 billion years time.<\/p>\n<p>The intricate detail within the structure of the shell of gas is quite extraordinary and shows how the gas is expanding out into space around the star.<\/p>\n<p>The MIRI Image on the right reveals, long suspected, that the central star is a binary system.<br \/>\nThere are two stars orbiting around one another.<\/p>\n<p>The crop of the left-hand region of the nebula shows a few beautiful faint galaxies lying way behind, photo-bombing the nebula.<\/p>\n<p>Utterly, utterly marvellous stuff.<\/p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-content\/uploads\/Southern-Ring-Galaxies.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-7308\" src=\"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-content\/uploads\/Southern-Ring-Galaxies-1024x791.png\" alt=\"Southern-Ring-Galaxies\" width=\"980\" height=\"757\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-content\/uploads\/Southern-Ring-Galaxies-1024x791.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-content\/uploads\/Southern-Ring-Galaxies-300x232.png 300w, https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-content\/uploads\/Southern-Ring-Galaxies-768x593.png 768w, https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-content\/uploads\/Southern-Ring-Galaxies-210x162.png 210w, https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-content\/uploads\/Southern-Ring-Galaxies-600x463.png 600w, https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-content\/uploads\/Southern-Ring-Galaxies.png 1156w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 980px) 100vw, 980px\" \/><\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Webb returned data to create two images of The Southern Ring Nebula. These images were created using data from the NIRCam (Left) and MIRI (Right) Instruments The Southern&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":{"title":"Webb's Southern Ring Nebula - Star-Gazing","description":"Webb returned data to create two images of The Southern Ring Nebula. These images were created using data from the NIRCam (Left) and MIRI (Right) Instruments Th"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7309,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7307\/revisions\/7309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}