Posted on 06/07/2020 9:07:28 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Explanation: The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its haunting symmetries are seen in the very central region of this stunning false-color picture, processed to reveal the enormous but extremely faint halo of gaseous material, over three light-years across, which surrounds the brighter, familiar planetary nebula. Made with data from the Nordic Optical Telescope in the Canary Islands, the composite picture shows extended emission from the nebula. Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a Sun-like star. Only much more recently however, have some planetaries been found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier active episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years.
(Excerpt) Read more at apod.nasa.gov ...
Interesting Photo. Picture at link.
*APOD ping*
Better to use the permalink. :^) Want to take over the old APoD ping list? :^)
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200607.html
APoD loves the Cat’s Eye.
https://apod.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/apod/apod_search?tquery=Cat+Eye
https://www.google.com/search?q=NGC+6543+site%3Aapod.nasa.gov
Naah, I’m having enough just keeping up with the daily cat stuff... gotta find new material every day (and still dealing with a$$holes complaining about them in every f’ing thread).
They’ve used this exact image for APOD 3 times now. 2010, 2014 and now 2020. They seem to recycle a lot of images through APOD.
Yup, and that's not confined to just this one image. Not sure how they pick the images, but it would seem as if it's not that hard to verify whether it's been used before. I guess it's close enough for gubmint work.
[old joke alert]
Yes, cat topics are often littered with complaints.
=facepalm=
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