How do you like your cat's eyes? 😺 8 August is International Cat Day and to celebrate, we bring you four different views of the Cat's Eye Nebula. Three thousand light years from Earth, the Cat’s Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is a sight that draws in the human eye where numerous bubbles are visible – shapes generated by the ejection of glowing gas as the star at its centre approaches the end of its life. An enormous but extremely faint halo of gaseous material surrounds the nebula and is over three light-years across. It was likely formed of material ejected during earlier active episodes in the star's evolution - most likely some 50 000 to 90 000 years ago. While large stars die in supernova explosions, average Sun-like stars form planetary nebulas as they exhaust their fuel supplies and slowly expire. The name ‘planetary nebula’ arose because the round shape, sculpted as layers of material are ejected, looked a little like a planet in small telescopes. The Cat’s Eye Nebula was discovered by William Herschel in 1786, and remains an interesting target for ground-based astronomers. Amateurs can see the magnitude 8.1 blob in the sky well enough to resolve the Cat’s Eye shape, while large telescopes have identified a wider halo extending into space. Observations of its intricate concentric gas shells and unusual shock-induced knots of gas suggest that the star ejected its mass in a series of pulses at 1500 year intervals. These convulsions created dust shells that each contain as much mass as all of the planets in our Solar System combined. 📸 Nordic Optical Telescope and Romano Corradi (Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, Spain) 📸 @europeanspaceagency , @nasa, HEIC and The Hubble Heritage Team (@space_telescopes/AURA); @creativecommons CC BY 4.0 📸 J.P. Harrington and K.J. Borkowski (@univofmaryland), and NASA 📸 J.P. Harrington and K.J. Borkowski (University of Maryland), and NASA #CatDay #InternationalCatDay #CatsEyeNebula #Nebula #Hubble #NGC6543