Sh2-216 is a planetary nebula visible in the constellation of Perseus.

It is located in the easternmost part of the constellation, about 5° west of the bright Capella; it appears as a faint gaseous filament that is difficult to observe due to its weak luminosity. Its observation requires powerful and sensitive instruments and in long exposure photos it barely emerges from the background star field. Its declination is moderately northern, therefore its observation is considerably facilitated for observers located at northern latitudes; south of the equator, however, it can be easily observed only up to the lower temperate regions.

With a distance of just 129 parsecs (about 420 light years), it is the closest planetary nebula to the solar system; the great dispersion of its gases, which also makes it the largest planetary nebula observable in the celestial vault, is due to the great age of the cloud, estimated at around 600,000 years. It was initially catalogued as an H II region, although the star responsible for the ionisation of the gases had not been identified; later, through spectrometric studies, the hypothesis was advanced that the cloud could be the remains of a very ancient planetary nebula with an extremely reduced expansion velocity, a hypothesis later confirmed thanks to the discovery of the central star, a white dwarf catalogued as LSV+46°21, in an off-centre position in an eastward direction. The surface temperature of the white dwarf is between 50,000 and 90,000 kelvin