Glint In The Cat's Eye

This image of the Cat's Eye Nebula was made by combining data from two of NASA's Great Observatories--Chandra and the Hubble Space Telescope. Data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory revealed a bright central star surrounded by a cloud of multimillion-degree gas in the planetary nebula known as the Cat's Eye. The intensity of the X-ray emission is correlated to the brightness of the orange coloring. The intensity of X-rays from the central star was unexpected, and this is the first time astronomers have seen such emissions from the central star of a planetary nebula.

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/UIUC/Y.Chu et al., Optical: NASA/HST