The Cat's Eye Nebula in Optical and X-ray
To some it looks like a cat's eye. To others, perhaps like a giant cosmic conch shell . It is actually one of the brightest and most highly detailed planetary nebula known, composed of gas expelled in the brief yet glorious phase near the end of life of a Sun-like star. This nebula 's dying central star may have produced the outer circular concentric shells by shrugging off outer layers in a series of regular convulsions. The formation of the beautiful, complex-yet-symmetric inner structures , however, is not well understood . The featured image is a composite of a digitally sharpened Hubble Space Telescope image with X-ray light captured by the orbiting Chandra Observatory . The exquisite floating space statue spans over half a light-year across. Of course, gazing into this Cat's Eye , humanity may well be seeing the fate of our sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution ... in about 5 billion years .