2CatsEyeNebula


Cat's Eye Nebula The Cat's Eye Nebula is a planetary nebula in the constellation Draco.

The Cat's Eye Nebula is one of the most complex nebulaes known. With its high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope observations revaling remarkable structures such as knots, jets, and sinewy arclike features.

Historically, The Cat's Eye Nebula was the first planetary to be observed with a spectroscope and to reveal the presence of emission lines. This started the controversy about whether planetaries consist of numerous stars or, as turned out to be the case, clouds of diffuse gas. An 8 cm telescope will show a foggy blue-green disk; more powerful instruments are needed to reveal the internal structure.

The sructure of the bright portion of the nebula is primarily caused by the interaction of a fast stellar wind being emitted by the central star with material ejected during the formation of the nebula. Modern studies reveal several mysteries. The intricacy of the structure may be caused in part by material ejected from a binary central star, but as yet, there is no direct evidence that the central star has a companion. Also, measurements of chemical abundances reveal a large discrepancy between measurements done by two different methods, the cause of which is uncertain.

Quick Facts: The Cat's Eye Nebula was discovered by william Herschel on February 15, 1786.

The Cat's Eye Nebula is three thousand light years away Earth and this nebula has rings.

It's resemblance to a cat's eye is due to a series of gas loops that have been ejected by the central star over the past 1,000 years or so.

The great complexity of the Cat’s Eye’s structure, with its concentric gas shells, jets of high-speed gas, and unusual shock-induced knots of gas, has led astronomers to suggest that the central star may be a binary system.

About 1,000 years ago the pattern of mass loss suddenly changed, and the Cat's Eye Nebula started forming inside the dusty shells.





Web Links:

www.nasa.gov www.wikipidea.org [|www.cfa.harvad.edu/seaforum]