Cat's Eye Nebula Age

The central star will continue to expand for another 10000 years give or take just a tiny fraction of its total lifespan until the central star runs out of atmosphere.

Cat's eye nebula age. 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. Previously this was thought to be composed of stars. The alluring Cats Eye nebula however lies three thousand light-years from Earth across interstellar space.

There he built himself a telescope and started to study astronomy. To some it may look like a cats eye. Huggins observations were the first indication that planetary nebulae consist of extremely rarefiedgases.

The Cats Eye Nebula NGC 6543 is a planetary nebula in the constellation of Draco. Visually it is similar to the cats eye and was named accordingly. Herschel was a German-born astronomer who emigrated to Great Britain at age 19.

The Spectacular Cats Eye Planetary Nebula 33 Thousands of years ago a star reached the end of its life and began to eject its outer layers forming one of the most complex planetary nebulae in the sky. Though the Cats Eye Nebula was one of the first planetary nebulae to be discovered it is one of the most complex such nebulae seen in space. 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.

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. This image reveals new details of the Cats Eye Nebula catalogued as NGC 6543 one of the most complex planetary nebulae ever seen. The Cats Eye Nebula NGC 6543 is a planetary nebula in the constellation Dragon.

I took this over two nights from Nerpio. 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. It has been expanding ever since as can be seen by comparing Hubble images taken in 1994 1997 2000 and 2002.