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NGC 6543, Cat's Eye / Sunflower Nebula - Narrowband + RGB, Mau_Bard

NGC 6543, Cat's Eye / Sunflower Nebula - Narrowband + RGB

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
NGC 6543, Cat's Eye / Sunflower Nebula - Narrowband + RGB, Mau_Bard

NGC 6543, Cat's Eye / Sunflower Nebula - Narrowband + RGB

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Description

Pretty complex object to record and process, due to its extreme high dynamic range and to the tiny size of the core structure, that with my setup was only a few tenths of pixel across (in order to achieve maximum digital definition I have drizzled 2x2 the image).

It is interesting to note the hexagonal shape of the outer nebula halo - hexagons pop up from time to time in cosmos (i.e. the one at the pole of Saturn)!

Nebula is from Narrowband signal, while stars are RGB.

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Cat's Eye Nebula (also known as NGC 6543, Caldwell 6, Sunflower Nebula (this one definition referring more to the shape of the outer structure, that includes IC 4677) is a planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Draco, discovered by William Herschel on February 15, 1786.
It lies about three thousand light-years from Earth.
It was the first planetary nebula whose spectrum was investigated in detail, by the English amateur astronomer William Huggins, demonstrating that planetary nebulae were gaseous and not stellar in nature.
Structurally, the object is extremely complex, inluding knots, jets, bubbles and complex arcs, illuminated by the central hot planetary nebula nucleus (PNN).

Observations show the bright central nebulosity report temperatures between 7000 and 9000 K, whose densities average of about 5000 particles per cubic centimetre. Its outer halo has a temperature around 15,000 K, but is of much lower density. Velocity of the fast stellar wind is about 1900 km/s, where spectroscopic analysis shows the current rate of mass loss averages 3.2×10−7 solar masses per year, equivalent to twenty trillion tons per second.

Surface temperature for the central PNN is about 80,000 K, being 10,000 times as luminous as the sun. Stellar classification is O7 + [WR]-type star. Calculations suggest the PNN is over one solar mass, from a theoretical initial 5 solar masses. The central Wolf–Rayet star has a radius of 0.65 R☉ (452000 km).

(Edited excerpt from Wikipedia)

The object continues to be studied, a recent article Pys.org  (September 2022) here, with related picture:
image.png
A side-by-side comparison of the three-dimensional model of the Cat's Eye Nebula created by Clairmont and the Cat's Eye Nebula as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: Ryan Clairmont (left), NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) (right)

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