Padlet Astronomy Project by ELEANOR SOMMER

The cat’s eye nebula is a planetary nebula located in the Draco constellation. On February fiftteen 1786, William Hershel discovered the cat’s eye nebula. On August twentyninth 1864, William Huggins became the first person to split apart the light coming from the rings of the nebula using a star-spectroscope and discovered that the nebula contained gasses rather than stars. On April twenty four 1900, E.E. Bernard discovered bright knots located in the cat’s eye nebula was. The cat’s eye nebula may be a planetary nebula, but even though it’s called a planetary nebula, it doesn’t actually have any planets. It is, in reality, a group of stars surrounded by gas. There are about 11 rings of gas in total that surround the stars located on the center. These rings form a pattern that is called the bull’s eye. Each ring of gas has as much matter in it as all of the planets in our solar system combined, which is only 1 percent of the sun’s mass. The rings of gas were likely caused by a star in the center giving off its mass in pulses that happened every 1,500 years. This surprised scientists because they have never heard of a dead star giving off so much matter in regular pulses. Many scientists have theories on why the pulses occur and why so much energy is released with each pulse. Some say that there is a magnetic field similar to the sun's that acts on the nebula causing it to behave in such a way. Others say that stars orbiting a dying star in the center of the cat’s eye nebula are responsible for the energy. There’s even a theory that stellar pulsations are occuring, which is when the star expands and contracts to try and keep its balance. Some also say that a star is ejecting its mass cleanly and the rings form later because of waves in the gasses. The nebula is three thousand three hundred light years away from earth and is one of the most complex planetary nebulas ever known, which leads to the idea that the bright center of the nebula is not one star, but a binary star system. The x-rays taken from the cat’s eye nebula show immense energy coming from a star in the center, which surprised many researchers, because they had never seen the center of a planetary nebula give off so much energy. The cat’s eye nebula has a large halo surrounding it that is approximately three light years across, and was estimated that the halo was there even before the nebula formed. In about five billion years, the sun is estimated to die like the star in the center of the nebula has done. The star expanded into a red giant, and started ejecting it’s matter in the rings, and after it is done ejecting the mass every 1500 years, the star will form a white dwarf.