Subj : Daily APOD Report To : All From : Ben Ritchey Date : Wed May 01 2019 09:49:55 Astronomy Picture of the Day Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! [1] Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2019 May 1 [2] The Cat's Eye Nebula in Optical and X-ray Image Credit: NASA [3] , ESA [4] , Hubble Legacy Archive [5] ; Chandra X-ray Obs. [6] ; Processing & Copyright: Rudy Pohl [7] Explanation: To some it looks like a cat's eye. To others, perhaps like a giant cosmic conch [8] shell. It is actually one of brightest and most highly detailed planetary nebula [9] known, composed of gas expelled in the brief yet glorious phase near the end of life of a Sun-like star. This nebula [10] 's dying central star may have produced the outer circular concentric shells [11] by shrugging [12] off outer [13] layers [14] in a series of regular convulsions. The formation [15] of the beautiful, complex-yet-symmetric inner structures, however, is not well understood [16] . The featured image [17] is a composite of a digitally sharpened Hubble Space Telescope [18] image with X-ray [19] light captured by [20] the orbiting Chandra Observatory [21] . The exquisite floating space statue spans over half a light-year [22] across. Of course, gazing into this Cat's Eye [23] , humanity may well be seeing the fate of our sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase [24] of evolution ... in about 5 billion years. Tomorrow's picture: open space ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- < [25] | Archive [26] | Submissions [27] | Index [28] | Search [29] | Calendar [30] | RSS [31] | Education [32] | About APOD [33] | Discuss [34] | > [35] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff [36] (MTU [37] ) & Jerry Bonnell [38] (UMCP [39] ) NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply [40] . NASA Web Privacy Policy and Important Notices [41] A service of: ASD [42] at NASA [43] / GSFC [44] & Michigan Tech. U. [45] ---------- Site notes: [1] archivepix.html [2] image/1905/CatsEye_HubblePohl_1278.jpg [3] https://www.nasa.gov/ [4] https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Welcome_to_ESA [5] https://hla.stsci.edu/ [6] http://chandra.harvard.edu/about/ [7] https://www.astrobin.com/395223/B/?nc=user [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conch [9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_nebula [10] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw0VJ1K93PM [11] https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004A%26A...417..637C/abstract [12] ap011003.html [13] ap031101.html [14] ap100509.html [15] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOA-19n4tiQ [16] http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012ApJ...759L..28P [17] https://www.flickr.com/photos/rudypohl/40388468763/in/dateposted/ [18] http://www.stsci.edu/hst/HST_overview [19] https://science.nasa.gov/ems/11_xrays [20] http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/openFITS/multiwavelength_data.html [21] http://chandra.harvard.edu/about/ [22] https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/light-year/en/ [23] ap031101.html [24] planetary_nebulae.html [25] ap190430.html [26] archivepix.html [27] lib/apsubmit2015.html [28] lib/aptree.html [29] https://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/apod/apod_search [30] calendar/allyears.html [31] /apod.rss [32] lib/edlinks.html [33] lib/about_apod.html [34] http://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod.php?date=190501 [35] ap190502.html [36] http://www.phy.mtu.edu/faculty/Nemiroff.html [37] http://www.phy.mtu.edu/ [38] https://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/jbonnell/www/bonnell.html [39] http://www.astro.umd.edu/ [40] lib/about_apod.html#srapply [41] https://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/HP_Privacy.html [42] https://astrophysics.gsfc.nasa.gov/ [43] https://www.nasa.gov/ [44] https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/ [45] http://www.mtu.edu/ --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 (Windows/32) * Origin: FIDONet - The Positronium Repository (1:393/68) .