Portal:Astronomy/Picture/16 August 2005

The Cat's Eye Nebula, or NGC 6543, is a planetary nebula in the Draco constellation. It has a relatively high apparent magnitude of +8.1, and the central star of the nebula is approximately 10,000 times the luminosity of our sun. NGC 6543 is located 3,600 light years from the Earth. It is expanding, and unexplainedly ejecting the concentric rings shown in the picture every few hundred years.