NASA describes the dying star, NGC 6543, in elegant scientific prose.
"The Cat's Eye (NGC 6543) represents a brief, yet glorious, phase in the life of a sun-like star."
The space agency recently posted a sharpened image of the distant planetary nebula, located some 3,000 light-years beyond Earth. These sprawling clouds of dust and gas form when stars similar to our sun reach the end of their lives and "gently eject their outer gaseous layers," according to NASA and ESA astronomers. The legendary Hubble Space Telescope, now nearly 30 years old, originally captured this image of the planetary nebula.
Though the creation of the Cat's Eye Nebula might be a relatively tranquil event, when larger, giant stars die, they release great clouds of matter into space in violent explosions, which also result in brilliant cosmic displays like the Eagle Nebula or Crab Nebula. These star remnants then become the birthplace of entirely new stars and planetary systems -- and so the galactic life cycle goes.
In NGC 6543, NASA suspects that the hypnotic outer concentric rings may have been formed by the star progressively shedding layers. Though the evolution of the complex, bubble-like inner-structures remains uncertain.
If you do choose to peer deeply into the Cat's Eye Nebula, you might see a foreshadowing of the sun's own future. It, too, will one day grow into a bloated star, gently shed its mass, and die.
"Of course, gazing into the Cat's Eye, astronomers may well be seeing the fate of our sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution ... in about 5 billion years," writes NASA.
