Nebula Cat's Eye Jupiter 000 light-years away

000 light-years away

The denser parts of the pillar are resisting being eroded by radiation much like a towering butte in Utah's Monument Valley withstands erosion by water and wind

spanning a width of 600 light-years

above and to the left of Venus

perhaps triggered by the encounter with the companion galaxy

Nebula Cat's Eye Jupiter 000 light-years awayThis composite of data from NASA's Chandra X ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope is a new look for NGC 6543, better known as the Cat's Eye nebula. This famous object is a so called planetary nebula that represents a phase of stellar evolution that the Sun should experience several billion years from now. 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