Three thousand light-years away, a dying star throws off
shells of glowing gas.
This
image from the Hubble
Space Telescope reveals the Cat's Eye Nebula to
be one of the most complex planetary nebulae known.
In fact,
the features seen in the Cat's
Eye are so complex that astronomers suspect the bright central object may
actually be a binary
star system.
Although these objects may appear round and planet-like in
small telescopes, high
resolution images reveal them to be stars surrounded by cocoons of gas
blown off in the late stages of stellar evolution.
