I wonder…

So, for English we're are going to need to these 'I wonder...' blogs where we research our curiosity topic, picking a new one each week, today I was curious about The Cat's Eye Nebula. What is causing the Cat’s Eye Nebula to appear this way?

What the Cat’s Eye Nebula is currently going through is a phase of stellar evolution that the sun will experience several billion years from now. Each 'ring' is actually the edge of a spherical bubble seen the projected onto the sky, that's why it appears bright along its outer edge. When a star begins to lose fuel,
it becomes a red giant. In this phase, a star sheds some of its outer layers. A fast wind streams away from its hot core, ramming into the ejected atmosphere, pushing it, creating the graceful colours across the galaxy. In the case of the Cat’s Eye, material shed by the star is flying away at 4 million miles per hour. Eventually, the hot core left behind will finish its phase and collapse into a dense white dwarf star. The central star is surrounded by a cloud of multimillion-degree gas.

Now, this makes me wonder…

Are there any other planetary nebula that can compare to the size of The Cat’s Eye Nebula?

Facts…

• The Nebula is thought to be 1,000 years old.
• The Nebula has three names, The Cat’s Eye Nebula, NGC 6543 and Caldwell 6.
• The Eye was discovered in 1786 by William Hershel.
• It is thought that it was originally 5 times the mass of the sun.
• The Cat’s Eye is believed to be around 3,300 light-years away
• The Planetary Nebula is found in the constellation Draco, in the Northern Hemisphere.

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