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Two Observatories, One Cosmic Eye: Hubble and Euclid View Cat’s Eye Nebula

A planetary nebula in space. The star in the very center is surrounded by white bubbles and loops of gas, all shining with a powerful blue light. Farther away a broken ring of red and blue gas clouds surrounds the nebula. A multitude of golden and white stars, wisps of gas and distant galaxies of various sizes surround the nebula on the black background.

Hubble and Euclid teamed up in this image of the Cat’s Eye Nebula, NGC 6543.

Credits:
ESA/Hubble & NASA, ESA Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA/Q1-2025, J.-C. Cuillandre & E. Bertin (CEA Paris-Saclay), Z. Tsvetanov

Two images of a planetary nebula (the Cat's Eye Nebula) in space. The image to the left, labeled “Euclid & Hubble”, shows the whole nebula and its surroundings. A star in the very center is surrounded by white bubbles and loops of gas, all shining with a powerful blue light. Farther away a broken ring of red and blue gas clouds surrounds the nebula. The background shows many stars and distant galaxies. A white box indicates the center of the nebula and this region is the image to the right, labelled “Hubble”. It shows the multi-layered bubbles, pointed jets and circular shells of gas that make up the nebula, as well as the central star, in greater detail.

ESA/Hubble & NASA, ESA Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA/Q1-2025, J.-C. Cuillandre & E. Bertin (CEA Paris-Saclay), Z. Tsvetanov

This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features one of the most visually intricate remnants of a dying star: the Cat’s Eye Nebula, also known as NGC 6543. This extraordinary planetary nebula lies in the constellation Draco and has captivated astronomers for decades with its elaborate and multilayered structure. Observations with ESA’s Gaia mission place the nebula at 4,400 light-years away.

Planetary nebulae, so-called because of their round shape, which made them appear to look like planets when viewed through early telescopes, are in fact expanding gas thrown off by stars in their final stages of evolution. It was the Cat’s Eye Nebula itself where this fact was first discovered in 1864 — examining the spectrum of its light reveals the emission from individual molecules that’s characteristic of a gas, distinguishing planetary nebulae from stars and galaxies.

Hubble also revolutionized our understanding of planetary nebulae; its detailed images showed that the simple, circular appearance of a planetary nebula seen from the ground belies a very complex morphology. This was particularly true of the Cat’s Eye Nebula, where Hubble images in 1995 revealed never-before-seen structures that broadened our understanding of how planetary nebulae come to be.

An image of the center of a planetary nebula (the Cat's Eye Nebula). A blue star sits at the center within a series of overlapping, translucent bubbles of gas. The bubbles have a complex, filamentary structure. The two largest bubbles overlap halfway, creating an eye-like shape with the star at the center. Jets of high-speed gas point out of the top and bottom of the nebula. Faint, concentric circles of gas also surround the star, out beyond the bubbles.

In this new image, Hubble captures the very core of billowing gas with the High Resolution Channel sub-instrument on its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). This instrument is optimized for taking very sharp images of fine details in a small area, such as the complex features at the heart of the Cat’s Eye Nebula. The data reveal a tapestry of concentric shells, jets of high-speed gas and dense knots sculpted by shock interactions, features that appear almost surreal in their intricacy. These structures are believed to record episodic mass loss from the dying star at the nebula’s center, creating a kind of cosmic “fossil record” of its final evolutionary stages. Part of these data were also used in a previous image of the Cat’s Eye Nebula, released in 2004. Previously unused data from ACS is combined with state-of-the-art image processing to create this new image, the sharpest yet taken of this nebula.

ESA/Hubble & NASA, Z. Tsvetanov

This time, Hubble is joined by ESA’s Euclid space telescope to create a new image of NGC 6543. The combined eyes of Hubble and Euclid reveal the remarkable complexity of stellar death in this object. Though primarily designed to map the distant universe, Euclid captures the Cat’s Eye Nebula as part of its deep imaging surveys. In Euclid’s wide, near-infrared, and visible light view, the arcs and filaments of the nebula’s bright central region are situated within a halo of colorful fragments of gas zooming away from the star. This ring was ejected from the star at an earlier stage, before the main nebula at the center formed. The whole nebula stands out against a backdrop teeming with distant galaxies, demonstrating how local astrophysical beauty and the farthest reaches of the cosmos can be seen together with Euclid.

In Euclid’s wide, near-infrared, and visible light view, the arcs and filaments of the nebula’s bright central region are situated within a halo of colorful fragments of gas zooming away from the star. This ring was ejected from the star at an earlier stage, before the main nebula at the center formed. Hubble captures the very core of the billowing gas with high-resolution visible-light images, adding extra detail in the center of this image. The whole nebula stands out against a backdrop teeming with distant galaxies, demonstrating how local astrophysical beauty and the farthest reaches of the cosmos can be seen together in modern astronomical surveys. Together, these missions provide a rich and complementary view of NGC 6543 — revealing the delicate interplay between stellar end-of-life processes and the vast cosmic tapestry beyond.

ESA/Hubble & NASA, ESA Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA/Q1-2025, J.-C. Cuillandre & E. Bertin (CEA Paris-Saclay), Z. Tsvetanov

Within this broad view of the nebula and its surroundings, Hubble captures the very core of the billowing gas with a new high-resolution visible-light image, adding extra detail in the center of this image. The data reveal a tapestry of concentric shells, jets of high-speed gas and dense knots sculpted by shock interactions, features that appear almost surreal in their intricacy. These structures are believed to record episodic mass loss from the dying star at the nebula’s center, creating a kind of cosmic “fossil record” of its final evolutionary stages.

Combining the focused view of Hubble with Euclid’s deep field observations not only highlights the nebula’s exquisite structure but also places it within the broader context of the universe that both space telescopes explore. Together, these missions provide a rich and complementary view of NGC 6543 — revealing the delicate interplay between stellar end-of-life processes and the vast cosmic tapestry beyond.

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

Related Images & Links

Two images of a planetary nebula in space. The image to the left, labeled “Euclid & Hubble”, shows the whole nebula and its surroundings. A star in the very center is surrounded by white bubbles and loops of gas, all shining with a powerful blue light. Farther away a broken ring of red and blue gas clouds surrounds the nebula. The background shows many stars and distant galaxies. A white box indicates the center of the nebula and this region is the image to the right, labelled “Hubble”. It shows the multi-layered bubbles, pointed jets and circular shells of gas that make up the nebula, as well as the central star, in greater detail.

Hubble and Euclid Image of the Cat’s Eye Nebula

Download a 12.1 MB Tiff (4000 X 1667) of the Euclid and Hubble image (left) and the Hubble image (right) of the Cat’s Eye Nebula.

An image of the center of a planetary nebula. A blue star sits at the center within a series of overlapping, translucent bubbles of gas. The bubbles have a complex, filamentary structure. The two largest bubbles overlap halfway, creating an eye-like shape with the star at the center. Jets of high-speed gas point out of the top and bottom of the nebula. Faint, concentric circles of gas also surround the star, out beyond the bubbles.

Hubble Image of the Cat’s Eye Nebula 2026

Download a 14.3 MB Tiff (1546 X 1608) of Hubble’s latest image of the Cat’s Eye Nebula.

Euclid and Hubble’s Image of the Cat’s Eye Nebula

Download a 18.9 MB Tiff (4000 X 2195) of the combined Euclid and Hubble view of the Cat’s Eye Nebula.

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Hubble Image of the Cat’s Eye Nebula 2004

This detailed Hubble image of the Cat’s Eye Nebula looks like the penetrating eye of the disembodied sorcerer Sauron from the film adaptation of “The Lord of the Rings.”