December 6, 2012
Day 6 of the 2012 Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar, one of 25 photos (eventually). The full beauty of the Cat’s Eye Nebula (NGC 6543), seen in a detailed view from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), showing a bull’s eye pattern of eleven or even more concentric rings, or shells, around the Cat’s Eye. Each ‘ring’ is actually the edge of a spherical bubble seen projected onto the sky — that’s why it appears bright along its outer edge. Observations suggest the star ejected its mass in a series of pulses at 1,500-year intervals. These convulsions created dust shells, each of which contain as much mass as all of the planets in our solar system combined (still only one percent of the Sun’s mass). These concentric shells make a layered, onion-skin structure around the dying star. The view from Hubble is like seeing an onion cut in half, where each skin layer is discernible. (NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA)

Day 6 of the 2012 Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar, one of 25 photos (eventually). The full beauty of the Cat’s Eye Nebula (NGC 6543), seen in a detailed view from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), showing a bull’s eye pattern of eleven or even more concentric rings, or shells, around the Cat’s Eye. Each ‘ring’ is actually the edge of a spherical bubble seen projected onto the sky — that’s why it appears bright along its outer edge. Observations suggest the star ejected its mass in a series of pulses at 1,500-year intervals. These convulsions created dust shells, each of which contain as much mass as all of the planets in our solar system combined (still only one percent of the Sun’s mass). These concentric shells make a layered, onion-skin structure around the dying star. The view from Hubble is like seeing an onion cut in half, where each skin layer is discernible. (NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA)

8:47am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Z0ayzvYn6JUe
(Notes: 22)
  
Filed under: nasa hubble awesome Astronomy 
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