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by Jackie Flynn Mogensen
March 04, 2026
from
ScientificAmerican Website
The Cat's Eye Nebula.
ESA/Hubble/NASA/ESA Euclid/Euclid Consortium
NASA/Q1-2025/J.-C. Cuillandre/E. Bertin
CEA Paris-Saclay/Z.
Tsvetanov
The
space-based telescopes Hubble and Euclid
combined
forces to capture the vibrant remains
of a dying
star in stunning new detail...
In 1995 NASA published images captured by the then nearly
five-year-old
Hubble Space Telescope of what the
agency
described as,
"one of the most complex planetary nebulae
ever seen."
The photographs showed a dying star, or perhaps
even stars, cocooned in striking red and green clouds of gas - the
so-called
Cat's Eye Nebula.
And now, more than 30 years later and alongside
the space telescope
Euclid, Hubble has trained its eye
back on the nebula, revealing it in even more stunning detail.
The images capture a wider view of the nebula, highlighting a ring
of material radiating from its center. Incredibly, this "halo" was
expelled from the star system before the rest of the nebula formed.
The combined observations,
"reveal the remarkable complexity of stellar
death in this object," NASA said in a
blog post.
The Hubble Space
Telescope and the Euclid space telescope
joined forces to
produce this image of the Cat's Eye Nebula.
ESA/Hubble/NASA/ESA Euclid/Euclid Consortium
NASA/Q1-2025/J.-C.
Cuillandre/E. Bertin
CEA Paris-Saclay/Z.
Tsvetanov
Some of the new Hubble observations show the Cat's Eye Nebula, also
known as
NGC 6543, in the finest detail ever
seen.
The nebula lies some 4,400 light-years away from
Earth.
Hubble's new image of the Cat's
Eye Nebula.
ESA/Hubble/NASA/Z. Tsvetanov
"The data reveal a tapestry of concentric shells, jets of
high-speed gas and dense knots sculpted by shock interactions,
features that appear almost surreal in their intricacy," NASA
wrote.
The observations could offer clues to how nebulas
like this one form.
By examining the structure of the Cat's Eye
Nebula in detail, astronomers can trace back the history of the
dying star at its center - essentially enabling them to read a,
"cosmic 'fossil record' of [the star's] final
evolutionary stages," NASA said.
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