Hubble, Euclid Space Telescopes Capture the Death Throes of a Dying Star

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Astronomers have combined detailed close-up views from the Hubble Space Telescope with wide-field observations from the Euclid Space Telescope owned by the European Space Agency (ESA) to get a closer look at the iconic Cat's Eye Nebula.

The result, as reported by Live Science, is stunning cosmic images showing glowing rings of blue, orange, and red, distorted as they move away from the dying star. Against a backdrop of galaxies and stars, the images feature the famous Cat's Eye Nebula, also known as NGC 6543.

Despite its serene and beautiful appearance, this stunning nebula is formed by the intricate interplay of the star's strong winds, outer layers, and powerful outbursts, creating intricate structures resembling an eye.

Lying about 4,300 light-years away from Earth, the Cat's Eye is a planetary nebula, a glowing, expanding cloud of gas emitted by low to medium-mass stars that have reached the final stages of their life.

Unlike more massive stars that die in violent supernova explosions, the central star has shed its outer layers into space, forming beautiful and complex shells of ejected material.

Euclid's wide-field view, captured in visible and near-infrared light, shows faint arcs and delicate filaments of gas surrounding the bright central region, while Hubble has captured detailed close-up views of the bright central region. These close-up images taken in visible light show a bright but dying star surrounded by white bubbles and blue gas rings.

Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys revealed finer, more intricate details at the core of the nebula, including the complexities of the gas bubbles and the fine filamentary structures within them.

These finer details serve as the "fossil record" of the nebula, according to ESA's statement. Each gas bubble represents an instance when the dying star shed its mass. The image shows that these bubbles are followed by concentric brown rings, with each ring marking the boundary of a bubble.

Furthermore, the data reveal bursts of high-energy, high-speed gas, shown in pink, ejecting from the top and bottom of the nebula. There are also solid clumps formed by the shock interaction of high-speed ejections and slowly expanding expelled material.

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