Wow, the title should get your attention. Of course it’s a corruption of Robert Pirsig’s famous book, Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, which in turn formed the basis of a new philosophy, that of the Metaphysics of Quality. Heavy eh?

The link is Cosmology or the metaphysical study of the origin and nature of the universe and, in this case, capturing evidence of what might be going on out there in the form of astrophotography. Unfortunately, whilst this blog might have high ambitions, you will not find the answer here to – Life the Universe and Everything.  However, my first half-decent picture of the M57, the Ring Nebula, does make you think.  Of all the features in the universe I find these most fascinating.  As the end and beginning of stars and other matter, they are, as far as we can know the origin of life itself ultimately. OK I am getting carried away but just look at the Wikipedia description of M57:

The Ring Nebula (also catalogued as Messier 57, M57 or NGC 6720) is a planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Lyra.^[5] Such objects are formed when a shell of ionized gas is expelled into the surrounding interstellar medium by a red giant star, which was passing through the last stage in its evolution before becoming a white dwarf.

 

 

That in itself is mind boggling and last week I was able to capture some of its photons on my camera in Redhill; sureal even, except it’s not. Nebulae are somewhat elusive, look at NGC 7000 the North American Nebula in the earlier post; look up and there’s nothing – apply some technology and PING, out jumps a nebula. In time I hope to capture far bigger and wonderful such features buried deep in the universe but this is my first, so it’s special.

On taking the initial images and only on close inspection on the computer screen, could I see a small but clear and yet anomalous blue spot. It could, at first glance, be another blue earthly like planet, except it is M57 in the constellation of Lyra some 2,283 ly from earth, with a diameter of 2.6 ly, that’s 15,280,000,000,000 miles, a temperature of 125,000K and is 200 times more luminous than our Sun.  However, through the vast distance of space it is insignificant to the eye.

M57 The Ring Nebula, just to the right of centre of the two stars at 2.00 o’clock and 8.00 o’clock.
Canon 700D ; WO GT81 + FF ; 10×30 sec at ISO 800

A bit more work by Mr GIMP and all is revealed:

M57 The Ring Nebula, cropped from the main image above.