As they run out of hydrogen fuel, the speed of outflow can greatly increase. In the Ring Nebula, this second wind is compresses the material from the earlier wind into the doughnut shape, and moves out to form bubbles above and below the doughnut. The latter bubbles can be seen in longer exposures as faint outer loops or rings. This image was made by Philip Ammar, a freshman. Each individual image had a 20 second exposure times, and had dark subtraction and flat field corrections.
North is up and East is to the left.
The angular dimensions are 9.6 by 6.2 arcminutes. The brightness scale is roughly indicated by noting the star in the lower left corner is magnitude 12.7. The Ring Nebula is found in the constellation of Lyra, which in turn is dominated by the bright star Vega. Vega, Deneb in Cynus, and Altair in Aquila make up the summer triangle, a large triange of bright stars that dominate the early evening sky in northern hemisphere summers. The triangle is just as observable inn the spring, only at a later hour.