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NGC 6543, John Bozeman

NGC 6543

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NGC 6543, John Bozeman

NGC 6543

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Description

The Cat's Eye Nebula 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 object has had high-resolution images by the Hubble Space Telescope revealing 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. NGC 6543 is a high northern declination deep-sky object. It has the combined magnitude of 8.1, with high surface brightness. Its small bright inner nebula subtends an average of 16.1 arcsec, with the outer prominent condensations about 25 arcsec. Deep images reveal an extended halo about 300 arcsec or 5 arcminutes across, that was once ejected by the central progenitor star during its red giant phase.


NGC 6543 Chandra X-ray (Screen)
NGC 6543 Hubble Optical - ACS F502N (Blue)
NGC 6543 Hubble Optical - ACS F505N (Green)
NGC 6543 Hubble Optical - ACS F658N (Red)

Processed with FITS Liberator, PixInsight and Photoshop 2024

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/RIT/J.Kastner et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI
Observation Date: 10 May 2000
Obs. ID: 6303
Image Release: NGC 6543: A Planetary Nebula Gallery (10 Oct 2012)

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NGC 6543, John Bozeman