Maravilloso, simple y sencillamente : Cats Eye nebula

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En el sitio web de Astronomy Picture of the Day explican :


Staring across interstellar space, thealluring Cat's Eyenebula lies three thousand light-years from Earth.A classicplanetarynebula, the Cat's Eye (NGC 6543) representsa final, briefyetglorious phase in the life of a sun-like star.This nebula's dying central star may have produced the simple,outer pattern of dustyconcentric shellsby shrugging off outer layers in a series of regular convulsions.But the formation of the beautiful, more complexinner structures is not well understood.Seen so clearly inthis sharp Hubble SpaceTelescope image,the truly cosmic eye is over half a light-year across. Of course,gazing into the Cat's Eye,astronomers may well be seeingthe fate of our sun, destined to enter its ownplanetary nebula phase ofevolution ... in about5 billion years.

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