Zoom into The Cat's Eye Nebula | Hubble

Zoom into The Cat's Eye Nebula | Hubble

The Cat's Eye Nebula (also known as NGC 6543 and Caldwell 6) is a planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Draco, discovered by William Herschel on February 15, 1786. It was the first planetary nebula whose spectrum was investigated by the English amateur astronomer William Huggins, demonstrating that planetary nebulae were gaseous and not stellar in nature. Structurally, the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed knots, jets, bubbles and complex arcs, being illuminated by the central hot planetary nebula nucleus (PNN). It is a well-studied object that has been observed from radio to X-ray wavelengths.

Credit: European Space Agency, NASA, HEIC, NOT, Digitized Sky Survey 2, G. Bacon and The Hubble Heritage Team [Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)/Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA)] and R. Corradi (Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, Spain)

Duration: 30 seconds

Release Date: December 31, 2014

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