Great Image: Cat's Eye

An endless variety of a images populate our night sky, such as the death of a star as shown here in the Cat's Eye Nebula. Just the idea of a halo 5 light years across is amazing, large enough to include both our Sun and Alpha Centauri. By the way, a variation on this image was cited in one of my earlier posts. 

Here is the explanation from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day: 

The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its more familiar outlines are seen in the brighter central region of the nebula in this impressive wide-angle view. But the composite image combines many short and long exposures to also reveal an extremely faint outer halo. At an estimated distance of 3,000 light-years, the faint outer halo is over 5 light-years across. Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a sun-like star. More recently, some planetary nebulae are found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years. Visible on the left, some 50 million light-years beyond the watchful planetary nebula, lies spiral galaxy NGC 6552. 

Image Credit & Copyright: Josh Smith

Great Image: Cat's Eye Nebula

With all the fascinating images in the movie Interstellar, we could forget that nature itself it stunningly beautiful all by itself, as demonstrated by this Hubble Space Telescope image of the Cat's Eye nebula (or NGC 6543).  Here is NASA's tale of this amazing picture:

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.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)