The Cat's Eye Nebula
from Hubble
From NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day
To some, it may look
like a cat's eye. The alluring
Cat's Eye nebula, however, lies three thousand light-years from Earth
across interstellar space.
A classic planetary nebula, the Cat's
Eye (NGC 6543) represents a final, brief yet glorious phase in
the life of a sun-like star.
This nebula's dying
central star may have produced the simple, outer pattern of dusty concentric shells by shrugging off outer layers in a series of
regular convulsions.
But the formation of the beautiful, more
complex inner structures is not well understood.
Seen so clearly in this
digitally sharpened Hubble Space Telescope image, the truly cosmic eye
is over half a light-year across.
Of course, gazing into this Cat's Eye,
astronomers may well be seeing the fate of our sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of
evolution ... in about 5
billion years.
