The Southern Ring Nebula, NGC 3132, is a planetary nebula in Vela whose true dying star, hidden in dust beside a brighter companion, was revealed by Webb.
At a glance
| type | nebula |
|---|---|
| distance from the Sun | 2,480 light-years (759 pc) |
| its light left it | 2,480 years ago |
| size in the piece | about 0.52 light-years acrossmodel |
Read off the piece’s own catalogue, the same values it draws with. Model marks a property of the piece’s galaxy model rather than a measurement.
About Southern Ring Nebula
NGC 3132 is a planetary nebula in the southern constellation Vela, also called the Eight-Burst Nebula. It is the cast-off envelope of a Sun-like star, an oval shell of glowing gas with fainter rings and loops around it. For a long time the bright star at its centre was assumed to be the one that made it, but that star is too cool to make the gas glow the way it does.
The James Webb Space Telescope chose it for its first set of released images. Its infrared view showed a second, much fainter star right beside the bright one, wrapped in dust: the hot core that actually shed the nebula. The surrounding shells and the spiral-like arcs in the outer gas point to further companions shaping the outflow, so the nebula is a record of a multiple star system, not a single star.
What you see in the piece
In the piece it is a small cloud of glowing gas in the southern Milky Way, a point from the Sun that only resolves when you fly to it.
Questions
What did Webb discover in the Southern Ring Nebula?
Webb’s infrared image revealed that the star that created the nebula is a faint, dust-shrouded companion next to the bright star at its centre.
How far away is the Southern Ring Nebula?
The Southern Ring Nebula is 2,480 light-years (759 pc) from the Sun.