The Catseye Nebula with Adaptive Optics

The above image shows the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) seen in visible light using the 200-inch Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory. This animated gif cycles between the standard visible-light view which is blurred by Earth's atmosphere and a corrected image using Palomar's Adaptive Optics System and LuckyCam.

The Cat's Eye Nebula is an example of a planetary nebula - an expanding cloud of gas given off by a dying star. It is located about 3,300 light years in the direction of the constellation of Draco.

The images of the Cat's Eye Nebula, 20 arcseconds on a side, are are a false-color combination of three wavelengths of light. The green light is mostly 500nm oxygen emission, red light from H-alpha hydrogen emission and blue color which has contributed by near-infrared (I-band) light.

Working on the Lucky Imaging project were Nicholas Law, Richard Dekany, Mike Ireland, and Anna Moore from Caltech along with the Palomar 200-inch crew. Other team members included Craig Mackay from Cambridge, James Lloyd from Cornell University, and Peter Tuthill, Henry Woodruff, and Gordon Robertson from the University of Sydney.

The research was based on observations obtained at the Hale Telescope, Palomar Observatory, as part of a collaborative agreement between the California Institute of Technology, its divisions Caltech Optical Observatories and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (operated for NASA), and Cornell University.