Ring Nebula: Synchrotron Radiation & Magnetic Fields

[DB]

Is the beauty and color to the Ring Nebula due to synchrotron radiation of particles (electrons) with higher energy (spin) being blueshifted the closer they are to the white dwarf at the center? If so is it the magnetic field that spins the electrons intensly and the futher away the electrons are from the field, the less spin, and are redshifted with distance?

Pic:
http://www.tivas.org.uk/archive/images/ring-nebula_m57.jpg

Thnx

 

[Phobos]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030322.html

Astronomers of the Hubble Heritage Project produced this strikingly sharp image from Hubble Space Telescope observations using natural appearing colors to indicate the temperature of the stellar gas shroud. Hot blue gas near the energizing central star gives way to progressively cooler green and yellow gas at greater distances with the coolest red gas along the outer boundary

 

[DB]

Thnx Phobos, after looking through the link, (http://heritage.stsci.edu/1999/01/fast_facts.html) it's seems that this a false colour image with Red being assigned to Nitrogen II, Green to Oxygen III and Blue to Helium II. So this isn't what it actually looks like in space?

 

[Phobos]

So this isn't what it actually looks like in space?

Unfortunately not.

Human eyes aren't so good at seeing color from faint objects. You need long-time exposures onto film (or digital) to capture colors. Plus, astronomers usually mess with the colors in the photos in order to bring out certain details they're studying.

If you were present within a nebula, it would be too thin to notice right around you (space would still look empty around you). From further away, it would probably look like a gray cloud (which is how it looks through a telescope).

Maybe we could see some faint colors if we had bigger, more sensitive eyes.

 

[DB]

Ya it's making sense to me now. I've seen quite a few different pics of the Ring Nebula and have come to understand that differences were due to the use of different filters of the particles emissions.

Take a look if you like:
http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/images/d2/ring_400.jpg
http://nineplanets.org/twn/img/n6720.jpg
http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~jma2u/Images/Astro Pics/ring nebula 1024.jpg
This one tells a lot
http://www.allthesky.com/nebulae/big/m57-b.jpg

 

[Phobos]

Side note...it may be possible to see some color in a nebula (not sure how much) if it were bright enough/if you were at the right distance/etc...but certainly nothing like the photos.