Cat's Eye Nebula Age
The Discovery the Cats Eye Nebula.
Cat's eye nebula age. In 1994 Hubble first revealed NGC 6543s surprisingly. Planetary nebulae are like snowflakes. High-resolution images from the Hubble Space Telescope revealed extraordinary structures such as nodes jets and arch-like features.
Structurally it is one of the most complex nebulae known with. A planetary nebula is the glowing gas ejected during the final stages of evolution of a star similar in mass to our Sun. To some it may look like a cats eye.
The Cats Eye Nebula. The Cat Eye Nebula NGC 6543 is a mythical object from the deep sky of the Northern Hemisphere. A planetary nebula forms when Sun-like stars gently eject their outer gaseous layers that form bright nebulae with amazing and confounding shapes.
Though the Cats Eye Nebula was one of the first planetary nebulae to be discovered it is one of the most complex such nebulae seen in space. The other nebulosity much fainter was apparently ejected from the star previously every 1500 years or so. Visually it is similar to the cats eye and was named accordingly.
The full beauty of the Cats Eye Nebula NGC 6543 is revealed in this new detailed view from NASAs Hubble Space Telescope. Added to the New General Catalogue over a century ago with the easily remembered designation NGC 6543 but commonly called the Cats Eye. I took this over two nights from Nerpio.
The image from Hubbles Advanced Camera for Surveys ACS shows a bulls eye pattern of eleven or even more concentric rings or shells around the Cats Eye. This image reveals new details of the Cats Eye Nebula catalogued as NGC 6543 one of the most complex planetary nebulae ever seen. The alluring Cats Eye nebula however lies three thousand light-years from Earth across interstellar space.