Planetary nebula emission lines were identified in this star in 1989 by the International Ultraviolet Explorer.

[2] In 1993, M. Parthasarathy et al. looked at the history of measurements of the brightness of the central star, and concluded that it was fading in the optical region of the spectrum.

[5] In 1995 the central planetary nebula nucleus was observed as a DA white dwarf, having seemingly faded by a factor of three between 1987 and 1995.

The white dwarf has an estimated mass of 0.6 M☉ and luminosity of 3,000 L☉[7] and has an observed companion star separated by 0.3 arcsecond.

[3] In 1998 Bobrowsky et al. described how the Hubble Space Telescope observations revealed a 17th-magnitude companion to the Stingray's 15th-magnitude central star.