Big Pic: Hubble Space Telescope Captures The Ring Nebula In Astonishing Detail

Astronomers love to point their telescopes at the Ring Nebula. Located 2,000 light years away in the constellation Lyra, this ring of glowing gas has a distinctive elliptical shape when seen from Earth. But new images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope suggest that the nebula actually looks a lot more like a football or a misshapen doughnut. Scientists now believe that the blue and green gaseous material at the center of the ring is a large football-shaped region sheathed by a ring of cooler...