Although generally considered a summer constellation, Lyra is still well placed for viewing in the fall. A search for it begins by locating a bright star.

The constellation of Lyra was supposed to represent Apollos harp. Six fainter stars form a little geometric pattern of a parallelogram attached at its northern corner to an equal-sided triangle.

Vega gleams at the western part of the triangle. The two lowest stars in the parallelogram are Beta and Gamma Lyrae. Beta is sometimes also known as Sheliak. Between these two stars, but a trifle nearer to Gamma is where you will find the Ring Nebula. It is about 2,300 light-years from Earth.

Antoine Darquier de Pellepoix of Toulouse, France first saw the Ring in January 1779. Using a telescope of about 3-inch aperture, he described it as a perfectly outlined disk as large as Jupiter, but dull in light and looking like a fading planet. A short time later, Charles Messier also saw it and added it to his catalogue of comet masqueraders listing it as M57. But like de Pellepoix, Messiers telescope was too crude to give a true picture of what he was looking at.

"It appears composed of very small stars," Messier wrote, "but with the best telescope it is impossible to distinguish them; they are merely suspected."

Not until six years later, in 1785, did Sir William Herschel (the discoverer of Uranus) actually see M57 as a ring. "It is among the curiosities of the heavens; a nebula that has a regular concentric dark spot in the middle." Herschel, however, incorrectly assumed that he was looking at " . . . a ring of stars."

As for the true nature of the ring, it is generally believed that sometime in the distant past, a star nearing the end of its life and having used up all of its nuclear fuel hurled great masses of gas out into space in a gaseous shell. This surrounding gas is still expanding and is made visible by the illumination from its extremely hot central star (which is merely the core left from the original star). The surface temperature of the star has been estimated at 216,000 degrees Fahrenheit (120,000 Celsius).

For a long time the explanation for the Ring Nebulas appearance was that the hazy disk was so much brighter around its edges that it looked like a ring; that we are looking through the rim of the gaseous shell lengthwise. Therefore, there is much more gas in our line of sight and the refraction of the light from the central star makes it more luminous, because each particle acts as a prism or mirror, and reflects the rays back to us.

More recent research, however, has confirmed that it indeed is likely a ring, or torus of bright material surrounding its central star. In fact, based on photographs taken from Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, some think that we might actually be looking down at a tunnel of gas shaped like a barrel or cylinder.

In the night sky, the Ring Nebula shines at magnitude 8.8, and thus is far too faint to be seen with the unaided eye. On this scale used by astronomers to indicate brightness, larger numbers mean fainter objects, and the limit for naked-eye viewing is around 6.

Any good pair of binoculars will locate the nebula, though it will look almost starlike in appearance because of its small apparent diameter.

The ring shape might just begin to become evident to most eyes in small telescopes using a magnification of 100-power, although at least a 6-inch telescope is recommended to see the ring clearly. With larger instruments and higher magnifications, the ring appears distinctly as a "tiny ghostly doughnut."

You might ask if the central star is visible within the "doughnut hole." The answer is yes and no.

The magnitude of this star is roughly 15. This one is almost 4,000 times fainter than the faintest star that you could see with your eyes without any optical aid.

Dont bother to look for the central star unless you have a telescope of at least 12-inch aperture. Even then, you will need an absolutely dark and clear, pristine night to get a chance at even a brief glimpse at it.

Only once, back in the mid 70s, did I see it. It was at the annual midsummer Stellafane convention, just outside of Springfield, Vermont. The Ring Nebula was one of the objects in view through the 12-inch Porter turret telescope atop Breezy Hill. I hasten to add, however, that my eyes were much younger back then, and the overall level of light pollution over much New England was considerably less back then as compared to now.

You should have no problem sighting the Ring Nebula with binoculars, but to experience its full grandeur, and to see its central star, we've called in the full resources of the Hubble Space Telescope for a close-up picture.