Watch: Abu Dhabi captures Cat’s Eye Nebula after nine-day imaging effort

Abu Dhabi's Al Khatim Astronomical Observatory recently unveiled a highly detailed image of the Cat's Eye Nebula, captured after a nine-day imaging effort involving over 36 hours of combined exposure from 724 individual photographs. Known formally as NGC 6543, the nebula resides in the Draco constellation approximately 3,000 light-years from Earth.

Discovered during a star's final stages, planetary nebulae like the Cat's Eye are not planetary in nature; instead, they form when a Sun-like star swells into a red giant, expelling its outer layers into space. The remaining core becomes a hot, dense white dwarf, which illuminates the expelled gas. The Abu Dhabi observatory used a 14-inch reflecting telescope and four filters to capture emissions from hydrogen, oxygen, sulphur, and infrared light.

The final image reveals both the nebula's bright central "eye" and a vast, faint outer halo of gas that documents an earlier phase of the star's decline. At the heart of the nebula lies the intricate structure responsible for its name, featuring overlapping shells, bubbles, and arcs of gas. Hubble Space Telescope data shows the inner Cat's Eye as one of the most complex planetary nebula structures, containing gas shells, high-speed jets, and knots of material, possibly formed by shock waves from the star's fast stellar winds.

The outer halo, consisting of filaments, edges, and scattered clouds of gas, serves as a historical record of the star's earlier evolution. Recently, combined Hubble and Euclid observations have helped differentiate between the older and younger structures within the nebula. The Cat's Eye Nebula offers a fascinating glimpse into the Sun's future fate, as our own star is expected to expel its outer layers and leave behind a white dwarf, potentially resulting in a nebula resembling the Cat's Eye.