🐱 Cat’s Eye Nebula! This extraordinary cosmic object is called a planetary nebula, which form when a Sun-like star ejects its outer gaseous layers, creating a bright nebula with amazing shapes. Observations of the Cat’s Eye Nebula suggest that it was created by a star that cast off its mass in a series of pulses at 1,500-year intervals. Each resulting dust shell contains as much mass as all of the planets in our solar system combined…which is still only one percent of our Sun's mass! This nebul

This nebula took a page out of J.R.R. Tolkien’s book! In this visible-light view of the Ring Nebula by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers were able to make out previously unseen details. The blue, gaseous center of the nebula is shaped like a football stuck through the red, gaseous ring. The dark, irregular knots of gas along the ring’s inner edge are actually a shadow effect created by light spikes around the main ring. The whole structure is about 2,000 light-years away and one light-year