m57Lyra

Check out m57Lyra. I was just surfing the net for blogs and come across m57Lyra's profile, I thought wow m57 is in the constellation Lyra, this person's got to be into astronomy. The person was still in the process of being approved so I kept on checking back until she was finally approved. Once approved I ventured over to take a peak and she has a couple of sites well worth your visit and comments. Being new everybody needs a little help so I thought I would throw a little traffic her way (very little, seen my blogroll, but what a blogroll Jerhico rules!). I asked her why she chose m57Lyra as a name, she said it was her first target she found on her own. M57 (m stands for messier, Charles Messier cataloged 110 various deep sky objects back in the 1700's). M57 holds fond memories for me as well, as it is my 2nd deep sky object I found by myself beside the great Hercules m13 globular star cluster. The light from m57 takes about 2,300 years to reach us, so you are looking back in time 2,300 years when you are viewing it. The central star, a white dwarf star is in its later stages of life and is releasing its atmosphere into space, making up the beautiful colors of the nebula. You can see the white dwarf in my pic I posted, this image was taken from my backyard last year.