The Ring Nebula is a stereotypical planetary nebula about 2,000 light-years away in the constellation of Lyra.

Otherwise called Messier 57, M57 or NGC 6720, this nebula was found by the French astronomer Charles Messier while looking for comets in January 1779.

Messier’s report of his independent discovery of Comet Bode reached the French astronomer Antoine Darquier de Pellepoix 2 weeks later on, who then separately found the Ring Nebula while following the comet.

The newly-discovered bar-shaped cloud of iron atoms fits inside the inner layer of the elliptically shaped nebula.

The cloud’s length is approximately 500 times that of Pluto’s orbit around the Sun and its mass of iron atoms is similar to the mass of Mars.

The cloud was found in observations acquired utilizing the Large Integral Field Unit (LIFU) mode of the brand-new WEAVE instrument on the Isaac Newton Group’s 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope.

“Even though the Ring Nebula has actually been studied utilizing several telescopes and instruments, WEAVE has actually permitted us to observe it in a brand-new method, offering a lot more information than previously,” stated Dr. Roger Wesson, an astronomer at University College London and Cardiff University.

“By acquiring a spectrum constantly throughout the entire nebula, we can develop pictures of the nebula at any wavelength and identify its chemical structure at any position.”

“When we processed the information and scrolled through the images, something popped out as clear as anything– this formerly unidentified ‘bar’ of ionized iron atoms, in the middle of the familiar and renowned ring.”

The nature of the iron ‘bar’ in the Ring Nebula is uncertain.

There are 2 prospective situations: the bar might expose something brand-new about how the ejection of the nebula by the moms and dad star advanced, or (more intriguingly) the iron may be an arc of plasma arising from the vaporization of a rocky world captured up in the star’s earlier growth.

“We certainly require to understand more– especially whether any other chemical components co-exist with the newly-detected iron, as this would most likely inform us the ideal class of design to pursue,” stated Professor Janet Drew, an astronomer at University College London.

“Right now, we are missing this crucial info.”

The findings were released today in the Regular monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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R. Wesson et al2026. WEAVE imaging spectroscopy of NGC 6720: an iron bar in the Ring. MNRAS 546 (1 ): staf2139; doi: 10.1093/ mnras/staf2139