Sunday, April 24, 2011

The Cat's Eye Nebula, as seen with the Hubble telescope. The inner eye is one half of a light year across, to give the picture some scale. the concentric outer dust rings were likely shrugged off by the dying star in some sort of repetitive convulsion, but how the eye structure itself was formed is a complete unknown. Something like this will be the fate of our own star in about five billion years.

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