January 30, 2017
The atoms in your body have known many forms: star core, drifting dust, ocean mineral, living cell.
The Cat's Eye Nebula from Hubble
Birthday · January 30, 2017
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APOD published January 30, 2017. Credit: Raul Villaverde. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
To some, it may look like a cat's eye. The alluring Cat's Eye nebula, however, lies three thousand light-years from Earth across interstellar space. A classic planetary nebula, the Cat's Eye (NGC 6543) represents a final, brief yet glorious phase in the life of a sun-like star. This nebula's dying central star may have produced the simple, outer pattern of dusty concentric shells by shrugging off outer layers in a series of regular convulsions. But the formation of the beautiful, more complex inner structures is not well understood. Seen so clearly in this digitally reprocessed Hubble Space Telescope image, the truly cosmic eye is over half a light-year across. Of course, gazing into this Cat's Eye, astronomers may well be seeing the fate of our sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution ... in about 5 billion years.
Image credit: Raul Villaverde