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The Cat’s Eye Nebula’s present-day reputation owes a lot to the Hubble House Telescope’s dramatic portraits, although it was well-known nicely over a century earlier than Hubble was even conceived. In 1864, Sir William Huggins (1824–1910) took a spectrum of the item that not lengthy after was catalogued as NGC 6543. It was the primary spectrum of a planetary nebula and Huggins was capable of distinguish nebulae from galaxies by their emission traces, attribute of incandescent fuel.
The Cat’s Eye is a marvellous planetary nebula in Draco that’s nicely on present presently of the yr, might be discovered and noticed via a small- to medium-aperture telescope, and is worthy of its illustrious historical past.
How you can observe:
The Cat’s Eye Nebula (NGC 6543 and Caldwell 6) lies within the far northern sky among the many stars of Draco, the Dragon. This a part of the sky is circumpolar at mid-northern latitudes, and the planetary culminates excessive overhead on summer time nights. The Cat’s Eye shouldn’t be too exhausting to find as, shining at magnitude +8.1, it’s one of many brighter planetaries and has the added bonus of a excessive floor brightness.
Conduct a search round 13 levels north of the ‘Head of Draco’ asterism (magnitude +2.2 gamma [γ] draconis [Eltanin] is the brighter of its 4 stars) for magnitude +3.1 Altais (delta [δ] Draconis) and magnitude +3.2 zeta (ζ) Draconis. These stars lie round 12 levels aside and the Cat’s Eye Nebula lies simply south of the halfway level between them.
Observing at low magnification via an 80–100mm (three- to four-inch) telescope, the nebula will look decidedly like an out- of-focus ninth-magnitude blue-green star, owing to its diminutive 23” ×17” kind. Nevertheless, ramping up the facility so far as circumstances enable and including an O-III filter to the sunshine prepare will deliver the Cats Eye to life.
For imagers and house owners of huge telescopes there’s an attention-grabbing problem to file IC 4677, a nebula mendacity very near the Cat’s Eye that till lately was regarded as a galaxy. The truth is, it’s the brightest a part of a halo of fabric that envelops the Cat’s Eye.
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