Apod 2.4

This image of a classic planetary nebula, NGC 6543, or more commonly know as the Cats eye Nebula, demonstrates a brief, yet beautiful phase in the life of a sun-like star. Scientists believe that this nebula's dying central star may have produced the simple, outer pattern of the concentric shells by shedding its outer layers in a series of regular expulsions. On the other hand, the formation of the more complex inner structures is not well understood. Although seen here very clearly in this sharpened Hubble Space Telescope image, scientists have very few ways of studying how this nebula grew into what it did. It is actually quite important for astronomers to discover the history of this nebula, for it is to believed that this may be the fate of our sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution in about 5 billion years.