"The Ring Nebula is a sight to behold. Located in the constellation Lyra, this kaleidoscopic doughnut of gas is the dying echo of a star not too unlike our sun. And according to a new study, it also hosts a never-before-seen, massive cloud of iron atoms. Astronomers aren't sure why. The cloud, which is in the shape of a bar, has slightly more mass than Mars."
"Astronomers spotted it using the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) in Spain using an optical spectrometer called the WHT Enhanced Area Velocity Explorer (WEAVE). The findings are detailed in a new paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. When we processed the data and scrolled through the images, one thing popped out as clear as anythingthis previously unknown bar of ionized iron atoms, in the middle of the familiar and iconic ring,"
A previously unknown, bar-shaped cloud of ionized iron atoms lies within the Ring Nebula in Lyra. The bar contains slightly more mass than Mars and spans a length comparable to about 500 times Pluto's orbit. The feature was detected through optical spectroscopy with the William Herschel Telescope using the WEAVE instrument. The iron bar is located near the nebula's center and may provide information about the nebula's formation, but its origin is unexplained. Follow-up observations with WEAVE are planned to characterize the structure. Similar iron features may exist in other planetary nebulae.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
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