menu
A Complete Guide to the Solar System and the Night Sky
Home
Search Objects
Major Solar System Objects
Comets
Asteroids
Spacecrafts
Star Maps
Orbits
public  Greenwich, UK Greenwich, UK  ⓘ
Timezone: Europe/London
Sunrise: 5:05 
Transit: 12:56 
Sunset: 20:48
warning Set your observing location to get relevant data
wb_twilight   (Nautical Twilight)  
Planets Visible Tonight
Planets Visible Tonight
 • 
What's Visible Now • Tonight Sky
Search  close

In Evidence

New Comet C/2025 J1 (Borisov) Discovered in May 2025
Detailed information about the discovery of Comet C/2025 J1 (Borisov) and pointers to useful resources to track and observe it. Read more...

Other deep sky objects in Lyra
All Constellations »  Lyra »  Deep Sky Objects » 

Messier 57 (Ring Nebula) - Planetary Nebula in Lyra

Above the horizon.  Rise: 18:30 | Tran: 4:10 | Set: 13:46
Alt: 71.30°   Az: 168.34°   Direction: South-South-East

Messier 57 is a Planetary Nebula in the Lyra constellation. Messier 57 is situated north of the celestial equator and, as such, it is more easily visible from the northern hemisphere. Given its visual magnitude of 8.8, Messier 57 is visible with the help of a binocular with a 60-70mm aperture or a small telescope.

The image below is a photograph of Messier 57 from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2 - see the credits section) taken in the red channel. The area of sky represented in the image is 0.5000x0.5000 degrees (30.00x30.00 arcmins).

Image of Messier 57 (Ring Nebula) - Planetary Nebula in Lyra star
/>
DSS2 image of Messier 57 in the Red band. The green region on the image is a representation of the major (1.27 arcmin) and minor (1.27 arcmin) axes of the object's apparent size.

Celestial Coordinates

Apparent

18h 54m 31s
+33° 03’ 41”
23h 42m 15s
18h 36m 47s

J2000

18h 53m 35s
+33° 01’ 42”

Finder Chart

The simplified sky charts below show the position of Messier 57 in the sky. The first chart has a field of view of 60° while the second one has a field of view of 10°.

loader
  Loading map...
Finder chart for Messier 57 (Ring Nebula) - Planetary Nebula in Lyra.

loader
  Loading map...
Finder chart for Messier 57 (Ring Nebula) - Planetary Nebula in Lyra.

Photometric Information

The following table lists the magnitude of Messier 57 in different bands of the electomagnetic spectrum (when available), from the B band (445nm wavelength, corresponding to the Blue color), to the V band ( 551nm wavelength, corresponding to Green/Yellow color), to the J, H, K bands (corresponding to 1220nm, 1630nm, 2190nm wavelengths respectively, which are colors not visible to the human eye).

9.7
8.8
16.4

For more information about photometry in astronomy, check the photometric system article on Wikipedia.

Apparent Size

The following table reports Messier 57 apparent angular size. The green area displayed on top of the DSS2 image of Messier 57 is a visual representation of it.
1.27 arcmin
1.27 arcmin

Rise and Set Times

Location: Greenwich, UK
Latitude: 51° 28’ 47” N
Longitude: 0° 00’ 00” E
Timezone: Europe/London

Today's Messier 57 (Ring Nebula) - Planetary Nebula in Lyra rise, transit and set times from Greenwich, UK are the following (all times relative to the local timezone Europe/London):

Azimuth: 56.9°
Max altitude: 71.6°
Azimuth: 303.1°