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For Release: Jan. 6, 1999
Media Advisory m99-003a


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HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE HERITAGE IMAGE OF THE RING NEBULA

     The NASA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the sharpest view yet of the most famous of all planetary nebulae: the Ring Nebula (M57). In this October 1998 image, the telescope has looked down a barrel of gas cast off by a dying star thousands years ago. This photo reveals elongated dark clumps of material embedded in the gas at the edge of the nebula; the dying central star floating in a blue haze of hot gas. The nebula is about light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Lyra.

Contact at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC:  Don Savage 
202/358-1727.
Contact at Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD:  
Cheryl Gundy 410/338-4707.

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