NGC 6543 Cat's Eye Nebula

The Cat’s Eye Nebula is a famous planetary nebula located in the northern constellation Draco. The nebula’s designation in the New General Catalogue is NGC 6543.

 

The Cat’s Eye is one of the most structurally complex nebulae known. It was formed around 1,000 years ago when a hot, bright central star expelled its outer envelope. It is sometimes also known as the Sunflower Nebula or the Snail Nebula. It lies at a distance of 3,300 light years from Earth.

 

There is an enormous but exceptionally faint halo of gaseous material surrounding the Cat’s Eye Nebula which is over three light-years across. Within the past years some planetary nebulae been found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material ejected during earlier active episodes in the star’s evolution – most likely some 50,000 to 90,000 years ago.

 

In my photo the Cat's Eye Nebula is the central, bright area. It is burnt out as I have probably overexposed the images but it means you can see the glow of the surrounding material.

 

The brightest of the knots in the nebula’s halo has its own entry in the IC catalogue: IC 4677.

 

Lower down in the image you can see NGC 6552 which is a barred spiral galaxy about 400 million light years from our solar system.

 

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Telescope: Celestron C11-A XLT Schmidt Cassegrain OTA

Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro

 

Controller: ZWO ASIAIR Pro

Main Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro at -10C

Filter: Optolong L-eNhance filter

Focuser: ZWO EAF

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI174MM Mini guidecam

Guide via: ZWO OAG

 

Stacked from:

Lights 34 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Darks 30 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Flat 30 at 100 ms, gain 101, temp -10C

Dark Flat 30 at 100 ms gain 101 temp -10C

 

Bortle 4 sky.

Integrated the saved frames in Astro Pixel Processor.

Adjusted in Photoshop CS4 and Topaz DeNoise AI

 

 

 

Done