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Cat's Eye Nebula

Also known as New General Catalogue 6543, C 6, Caldwell 6, '''Cat's Eye Nebula'''

planetary nebula in the constellation Draco

AI overview

The Cat's Eye Nebula is a planetary nebula located in the constellation Draco, formed when a dying star shed its outer layers of gas. It's a striking example of what happens at the end of a star's life and helps astronomers understand stellar evolution and the fate of stars like our Sun.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

In the Vinony graph

Vinony's link graph records 576 inbound references to Cat's Eye Nebula, and connects out to minute and second of arc, hydrogen and light-year.

It is catalogued under topics including Astronomical objects discovered in 1786, Caldwell objects and Discoveries by William Herschel.

Vinony links it to 66 Wikipedia language editions.

Wikidata facts

Constellation: Draco
Distance from Earth: 1623
Radius: 0.2
Image: Catseye-big.jpg

Show 15 more facts

Commons category: Cat's Eye Nebula
Commons gallery: Cat's Eye Nebula
discoverer or inventor: William Herschel
time of discovery or invention: 1786-02-15
catalog code: Gaia DR2 1633325248915154176
apparent magnitude: 8.340
spectral class: WR/Of
absolute magnitude: -1.9
right ascension: 269.63918438310600
declination: 66.63298582272510
parallax: 24.3
radial velocity: -65.7
epoch: J2000.0
right ascension component of proper motion: -15
declination component of proper motion: 8

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Encyclopedic overview

The Cat's Eye Nebula (also known as NGC 6543 and Caldwell 6) was a planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Draco, discovered by William Herschel on February 15, 1786. It was the first planetary nebula whose spectrum was investigated by the English amateur astronomer William Huggins, demonstrating that planetary nebulae were gaseous and not stellar in nature. Structurally, the object has had high-resolution images by the Hubble Space Telescope revealing knots, jets, bubbles and complex arcs, being illuminated by the central hot planetary nebula nucleus (PNN). It is a well-studied object that has been observed from radio to X-ray wavelengths. At the centre of the Cat's Eye Nebula is a dying Wolf–Rayet star, the sort of which can be seen in the Webb Telescope's image of WR 124. The Cat's Eye Nebula's central star shines at magnitude +11.4. Hubble Space Telescope images show a sort of dart board pattern of concentric rings emanating outwards from the centre.

General information

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Cat's Eye Nebula” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.