Chandra Release - January 8, 2001

Visual Description: NGC 6543

The image of the planetary nebula NGC 6543 features two images side by side, each showing a different aspect of the nebula.  For the left image, the X-ray data from Chandra revealed a bright central star surrounded by a cloud of multimillion-degree gas in the planetary nebula also known as the Cat's Eye. It’s shaped like an elongated orange nugget. This Chandra image, where the intensity of the X-ray emission is correlated to the brightness of the orange coloring, captures the expulsion of material from a star that is expected to collapse into a white dwarf in a few million years. On the right is a composite image of Chandra X-ray and Hubble optical data that offers astronomers an opportunity to compare where the hotter, X-ray emitting gas appears in relation to the cooler material seen in optical wavelengths.  The shape of the optical data is more of a twisted corkscrew. Chandra found that the chemical abundances in the region of hot gas (its X-ray intensity is shown in blue-purple) were like those in the wind from the central star and different from the outer cooler optical material (as red and green structures.)