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. Read more…
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