Astronomy Picture of The Day
Three thousand light-years away, a dying star throws off shells of glowing gas. This image from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals the Cat's Eye Nebula to be one of the most complex planetary nebulae known. In fact, the features seen in the Cat's Eye are so complex that astronomers suspect the bright central object may actually be a binary star system. The term planetary nebula, used to describe this general class of objects, is misleading. Although these objects may appear round and planet-like in small telescopes, high resolution images reveal them to be stars surrounded by cocoons of gas blown off in the late stages of stellar evolution.
4 comments:
I love this site. Your posts always remind me to go look at it. Can't wait to get a telescope. Guess I should start a wish list as well as a life list. Of coarse you'd never see something like that with a telecope.
you always find the neatest things....
very cool!
I need to remember to visit this site more often. The pics on here are awesome.
M~
Who knew gas could be so beautiful?
At first, I thought you got a new kind of lens...like an x-ray lens or something...and took a picture of your cat's eye. I was a little grossed out until I realized what it really was. It's very pretty.
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