The Beautiful Messier 57 Ring Nebula
If there is anything that could be considered one of the most breathtaking photos captured by NASA and the ESA on this list, it’s obviously Messier 57. Of course, this is a gorgeous ring nebula that is actually the glowing remains of a sun-like star. If you look closely, you can see a white dot in the center of the nebula. This happens to be the star that caused all of this. It is a white dwarf star, which can certainly be bright but nowhere near the luminosity level of any blue giant or supergiant star. Yet the nebula happens to be relatively close to us in the Orion arm of the Milky Way.
Due to being in our galaxy, you can actually see it in many amateur telescopes. In fact, that was how it was discovered. A man by the name of Antoine Darquier de Pellepoix first saw it in 1779. He went on to describe it but the drawings never do the nebula justice. Thus, the Hubble Space Telescope was tasked with capturing high-resolution images like the one you see above. M57 differs from other star guts you might see in space. The deep blue color is from helium, the light blue color is from hydrogen and oxygen, and the reddish color ring is from nitrogen and sulfur.