🌫️ Nebula
Cat’s Eye Nebula
Glowing shells of gas from a dying star, shaped like an eye.
- Distance
- 3,000 light-years away
- Size
- 5 light-years across
- Discovered
- 1786, by William Herschel
Did you know?
- It has at least eleven rings of gas, puffed out by the star about every 1,500 years.
The life of a starA step in a star’s life: a shell of glowing gas
Compare Cat’s Eye Nebula with the Milky WaySide by side, to scale, in the app
More NASA photos of Cat’s Eye NebulaStraight from NASA’s image library, in the app
Explore more
All of deep space
The Sun
Our star, an ordinary one that keeps everything here alive.
Betelgeuse
A red supergiant in Orion that will one day explode.
Alpha Centauri
The closest star system to the Sun.
Eta Carinae
A pair of giant stars, one of them about 90 times heavier than the Sun.
Mira
A red giant star racing through space with a tail like a comet.
Zeta Ophiuchi
A runaway star, flung out when its partner exploded.