The Dharma Project Observatory has been inundated with thick smoke this summer from the wildfires encircling the Methow Valley. I have spent many clear, moonless nights sitting on my hands waiting for relief, but the haze continues to linger. Such is the life of the astrophotographer: if it isn’t clouds or moonlight, it is always something else. In the meantime, processing data captured earlier in the season with the IMX585 sensor provides a welcome refuge.
Speaking of smoke: viewed through an eyepiece, the Ring Nebula (Messier 57) in Lyra resembles a ghostly, blue-green smoke ring suspended silently in deep space. Though relatively compact at just over an arcminute across, it glows with remarkable surface brightness. Like the Dumbbell Nebula (M27) shared previously, M57 is a planetary nebula—the illuminated death shroud of an intermediate-mass star that exhausted its nuclear fuel and cast off its outer envelopes. What appears as a simple circular smoke ring is in reality a thick, glowing torus viewed almost directly down its polar axis, lit from within by the blistering ultraviolet radiation of a dying central white dwarf.
The high pixel resolution of the IMX585 sensor pulled out crisp structural details along the inner rim, and with careful stretching, even hints of the delicate, expansive outer halo began to emerge from the background noise. The interplay of colors—the deep teal-blue of doubly ionized oxygen (OIII) nestled within the fiery reddish fringe of hydrogen and nitrogen—forms a luminous, cosmic “O.” The sight immediately brought to mind a hanging ink scroll I encountered years ago while studying Chanoyu (Tea Ceremony) and Zen Buddhism in college.
In Zen calligraphy, this spontaneous circle is the Ensō (円相)—a deceptively simple stroke that carries profound philosophical weight.
First, it is the visual embodiment of form and emptiness (śūnyatā), the realization of the Heart Sutra that form is emptiness and emptiness is form. The circle outlines an apparent boundary, yet the open space inside is identical to the space outside; it is the fertile void that gives rise to all phenomena, much like the quantum vacuum whose zero-point energy underpins our physical universe.
Second, an Ensō is typically executed in a single, fluid, unrepeatable flow of ink. It embraces asymmetry and raw texture, embodying wabi-sabi—the profound truth that imperfection and impermanence are themselves expressions of wholeness.
Third, it evokes the classic Zen kōan of the “Original Face”—our unconditioned nature prior to the unfolding of time, space, and individual identity.
Finally, every Ensō serves as an unvarnished mirror of the practitioner’s mind, capturing in carbon and water the painter’s immediate physical, mental, and emotional state.
Looking into the ring of M57, cosmic scale folds back upon itself. The eye gazes out across two thousand light-years into the stellar fires of creation and dissolution, only to encounter our own awareness looking back: the quiet thrum of consciousness floating in infinite space.
