To some it
looks like a cat’s eye. To others, perhaps like a giant cosmic conch shell. It is actually one of the brightest and most highly
detailed planetary nebula known, composed of gas expelled in the brief yet
glorious phase near the end of life of a Sun-like star. This nebula‘s dying central star may have produced the outer
circular concentric shells by shrugging off outer layers in a series of regular convulsions. The formation of the beautiful, complex-yet-symmetric inner structures, however, is not well understood. The featured image is a composite of a digitally sharpened Hubble Space Telescope image with X-ray light captured by the orbiting Chandra Observatory. The exquisite floating space statue spans over half
a light-year across. Of course, gazing into this Cat’s
Eye, humanity 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 & info via APOD
Image
Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Legacy Archive; Chandra X-ray Obs.;
Processing
& Copyright: Rudy Pohl
Source: The
Cat’s Eye Nebula in Optical and X-ray – Scents of Science (myfusimotors.com)
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