For several years prior to imaging this dark ring, Morehouse had referred to the structure as "The Bird's Nest." In 1927, Edward Emerson Barnard cataloged the dense eastern segment as dark nebula ...

We are staring "right down the barrel of it, which is really quite surprising to me — we're just lucky." One of the most photographed objects in the night sky is the Ring Nebula, wreckage of a ...