Very high Dynamic range composition of the catseye NGC 6543 with its outer nebula (Tim Hawkes)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Draco (Dra) · Contains: Cat's Eye Nebula · NGC 6543

Very high Dynamic range composition of the catseye NGC 6543 with its outer nebula, Tim Hawkes

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Very high Dynamic range composition of the catseye NGC 6543 with its outer nebula

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Very high Dynamic range composition of the catseye NGC 6543 with its outer nebula

A ~ 7h narrow band (HOO) image of the diffuse outer nebula with a detailed image of the far brighter core - where the latter was itself a high dynamic range and high resolution composition of short 1 and 2s frames further resolved ed by deconvolution. Combining the two required bespoke programming in PI Pixmath in order to carefully minimise the bright centre and diffraction spikes at the centre of the narrowband image - without losing too much background detail - to enable addition of the sharp core catseye image. Stars from NB removed and replaced with RGB stars.

The catseye one of my favourite objects. Pulsed emissions of star stuff every 1500 years or so forming bright ionized bubbles at the core - the faint outer nebula released much earlier. At the core an extremely hot Wolf-Rayet type white dwarf ionizing and energising N+ and O2+ to excited spin states and emitting red and blue-green from forbidden transitions. Hard X ray emissions providing evidence for a hidden binary companion star with a high energy acretion disc . Likely therefore that the WR star is precessing in its orbit - which might partly account for the peculiar shape of the core nebula and the apparent multiple positions of the unionized 'cap' material - possibly marking the axis of a former pulse shell?

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Very high Dynamic range composition of the catseye NGC 6543 with its outer nebula

Very high Dynamic range composition of the catseye NGC 6543 with its outer nebula

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Very high Dynamic range composition of the catseye NGC 6543 with its outer nebula

Very high Dynamic range composition of the catseye NGC 6543 with its outer nebula

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