Cat’s Eye Nebula

This public domain photo is from GRIN, the Great Images In NASA Collection within the NASA image archive.

This colorful image captures the Cat’s Eye Nebula, which is a complex nebula that exhibits a wide variety of gaseous clouds, layers, and jets. NASA’s website notes that this may be a “double-star system.” They point out that adding a second star to the equation would help to explain some of the complexities of this formation.

There is no doubt that many applications exist for an image with this level of vibrancy and complexity. You could use it as a desktop wallpaper… have a couple drinks and stare at your screen. No shame in that.

This image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope – NASA. NASA is an Agency of the United States Government, therefore this image is in the public domain.

1.8 Megabyte JPG. Hosted by nasa.gov.

1. Walden
   03.19.10

   The stark, starless blackness of space provides the background for the massive cat’s eye nebula which glows forth in a neon radiance. It doesn’t feel natural, but it undeniably is a phenomenon of deep space. At the center, what would be the pupil of the cat’s eye, is the oblong green crescent that blossoms outward like an explosion. At its edges are orange sparks that might be fire, and at the center, a purple point of streaking light which look powerful and strange. Like two colliding explosives, the green globes come in contact with each other, crossing at that purple point and trailing their fire through the emptiness of space. They’re bright, stark, and supernatural. The feeling a viewer gets may be one of awe, but two other warring emotions arise too. One is fear, of the power of the nebula and of what strange things might exist in such a bright place, and the other is excitement, at the imagined wonders of other worlds and the curious discoveries science has been promised. These are not mutually exclusive; they are both evoked by the huge scale and pure, crisp, image of the cat’s eye nebula against empty space.

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2. Mazi Bentley
   03.22.10

   Because of it’s transparency, it looks like a huge orange and green jellyfish that drifts in the space….Or like an explosion in process – like two separate green color-bombs exploded, and a third in the middle of first two explosions…and there are a fire-like flames at the poles, orange and beautiful. The most interesting is the spark in the middle – it is white and purple and it resembles a snowflake! A snowflake in the middle of fire-like explosion – a true nature’s masterpiece.

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3. jalalkhan
   05.15.10

   Blowfish in a mating dance

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