NASA-LMT and Hubble Space Telescope Imagery of M57                     

         

BVR composite views of the planetary nebula M57 (The Ring Nebula) in Lyrae. The first two images were acquired with the NASA-LMT using B, V,
and R filters on separate nights. The left image was obtained with the 24 um pixel (0.960 arcsecond/pix) PV1K CCD, while the center was obtained with
the higher resolution 15 um pixel (0.598 arcsecond/pix) LSP 2K CCD. The right image was acquired by HST and is shown as a high-resolution comparison.
Although the 2K LSP CCD has higher resolution than the PV1K by virtue of its smaller pixels, it has very poor quantum efficiency in B. A PV1K B band
image was re-sampled and substituted for use in the center composite to replicate the theoretical performance of a B sensitive 15 um CCD. Individual images
were acquired throughout 1996-2000 NASA-LMT operations. Resolution for the LMT and HST images are 1.5 and 0.043 arcseconds FWHM respectively.