Cat's Eye Nebula Age
The Cats Eye Nebula NGC 6543 is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky.
Cat's eye nebula age. The size and expansion rate of the Cats Eye suggest the nebula is just 1000 years old. The nebulas structural complexity may be the result of material being expelled from a binary central star but the existence of a binary companion has not yet been. I took this over two nights from Nerpio.
Structurally it is one of the most complex nebulae known with. Added to the New General Catalogue over a century ago with the easily remembered designation NGC 6543 but commonly called the Cats Eye. The Cat Eye Nebula NGC 6543 is a mythical object from the deep sky of the Northern Hemisphere.
A classic planetary nebula the Cats Eye NGC 6543 represents a final brief yet glorious phase in the life of a sun-like star. There he built himself a telescope and started to study astronomy. The alluring Cats Eye nebula however lies three thousand light-years from Earth across interstellar space.
Visually it is similar to the cats eye and was named accordingly. This image reveals new details of the Cats Eye Nebula catalogued as NGC 6543 one of the most complex planetary nebulae ever seen. The distance measured by the Gaia mission is 655 light-years.
Huggins observations were the first indication that planetary nebulae consist of extremely rarefiedgases. It is a Planetary Nebula expanding gas shell ejected from an end-of-life star in the constellation of the Dragon whose age is estimated at only 1000 years and the distance at only 5200 light years. The nebula was discovered by William Herschelon February 15 1786 and was the first planetary nebula to be observed with a spectroscope by William Hugginsin 1864.
No two look alike. The Cats Eye Nebula has a complex intricate structure which includes knots bubbles concentric gas shells and jets of gas as seen in hi-res images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994. In 1994 Hubble first revealed NGC 6543s surprisingly.