NGC 6543 - a twinkle in the cat's eye (Tom Gray)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Draco (Dra) · Contains: Cat's Eye Nebula · IC 4677 · NGC 6543 · NGC 6552

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NGC 6543 - a twinkle in the cat's eye

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NGC 6543 - a twinkle in the cat's eye

What a challenge this has been, and I have to say I was rather disappointed with the outcome, with just over 4 hours data using 5 and 10 minutes subs. That said there is some nice detail in the cat’s eye even if that lovely iris is only just visible. I over-saturated the image to show off the glorious structure and colour in the pupil (which looks broadly authentic when compared with other images), but apart from IC4667 the iris is rather bland.

Shooting under a bright moon is challenging, even with NB filters - the OIII band line is too wide in my Optolong L-eNhance filter, and this creates too much gradient/noise. Some detail is lost, trying to suppress this. I expect this is one for a good dark night with excellent seeing.

Lying 3,600 LY away from us, this planetary nebula burns brightly, and has been widely studied by Hubble/ESA showing a serious of concentric rings puffed off the progenitor star every 1500 years or so, at colossal velocities ~1900 km/s. These are not visible in my low resolution image, but occur in the blue oxygen rich ring around the complex bubbles and twisted lobes surrounding the progenitor star (just about visible with some imagination).

Optolong L-eNhance filter
Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope (SCT) Imagers
Altair Astro 183 M/C Hypercams
UK Astro-Imaging

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5606930
PixInsight job	U6JVNAMO7ACIEOY5FLJ5KI7RSNICGSBV
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	17h58m34s.221
RA (top/left)	18h00m21s.757
RA (top/right)	17h56m54s.359
RA (bottom/right)	17h56m47s.678
RA (bottom/left)	18h00m13s.234

Dec (center)	+66°37′36″.53
Dec (top/left)	+66°44′06″.50
Dec (top/right)	+66°45′12″.14
Dec (bottom/right)	+66°31′02″.19
Dec (bottom/left)	+66°29′56″.78

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NGC 6543 - a twinkle in the cat's eye

NGC 6543 - a twinkle in the cat's eye

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NGC 6543 - a twinkle in the cat's eye

NGC 6543 - a twinkle in the cat's eye

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