Chandra Release - July 30, 2008

Visual Description: NGC 6543

A composite image of the planetary nebula NGC 6543, also known as the Cat's Eye Nebula, is shown. The image features a bright electric blue elongated glow in the center, surrounded by a larger ring-shaped structure in shades of red and purple. This composite includes data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue) and Hubble Space Telescope (red and purple). When a star like the Sun begins to run out of fuel, it becomes what is known as a red giant. In this phase, a star sheds some of its outer layers, eventually leaving behind a hot core that collapses to form a dense white dwarf star. A fast wind emanating from the hot core rams into the ejected atmosphere, pushes it outward, and creates the graceful filamentary structures seen with optical telescopes.  Chandra's X-ray data of NGC 6543 shows that its central star is surrounded by a cloud of multi-million-degree gas. By comparing where the X-rays lie in relation to the structures seen in optical light by Hubble, astronomers were able to deduce that the chemical abundances in the region of hot gas were like those in the wind from the central star and different from the outer cooler material. In the case of the Cat's Eye, material shed by the star is flying away at a speed of about 4 million miles per hour. The star itself is expected to collapse to become a white dwarf star in a few million years.