The star that put a ring on it.

Astronomers have spotted a rare picture of a nebula that looks uncannily like an engagement ring.

Captured using using ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile spotted planetary nebula PN A66 33 was created when an aging star blew off its outer layers.

The bubble is, by chance, aligned with a foreground star, and bears an uncanny resemblance to a diamond engagement ring. 

'This cosmic gem is unusually symmetric, appearing to be almost circular on the sky,' said the European Space Agency, which revealed the image.

This image, captured by ESO¿s Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows the remarkably round planetary nebula Abell 33, located roughly 2500 light-years from Earth. Being perfectly round is uncommon for these objects, say astronomers, usually something disturbs the symmetry and causes the planetary nebula to display irregular shapes.

On the way to this final phase of their lives the stars throw their atmospheres out into the space and create planetary nebulae, colourful glowing clouds of gas surrounding the small, bright stellar relics.

The remnant of Abell 33’s progenitor star, on its way to becoming a white dwarf, can be seen just slightly off-centre inside the nebula, visible as a tiny white pearl.

This wide-field view shows the sky around the planetary nebula Abell 33, which appears as the ghostly blue circle near the centre of the picture. The bright orange star at the top is Iota Hydri, which is bright enough to be seen with the naked eye.

It is still bright — more luminous than our own Sun — and emits enough ultraviolet radiation to make the bubble of expelled atmosphere glow.

Abell 33 is just one of the 86 objects included in astronomer George Abell's 1966 Abell Catalogue of Planetary Nebulae. 

Abell also scoured the skies for galaxy clusters, compiling the Abell Catalogue of over 4000 of these clusters in both the northern and southern hemispheres of the sky.