The Hubble Space Telescope has cast its eye on a fuzzy patch of emissions in space known as the Cat's Eye Nebula, revealing a series of concentric rings in new detail.

Formally cataloged NGC 6543, the Cat's Eye is a planetary nebula, a class of objects so-named because when they were first noticed, through the small telescopes available to early astronomers, they looked like the fuzzy disks of Jupiter and the other gas-giant planets.

Like others, the Cat's Eye formed when a Sun-like star gently ejected its outer gaseous layers toward the end of its life. The concentric rings are actually shells or bubbles of expelled gas and dust, only their edges being evident. The new view, released today, reveals at least 11 of these bubbles, seen like layers of an onion when sliced in half.

To create the rings, the dying star ejected material in intervals of about 1,500 years, astronomers said.

Scientists have only recently learned that the formation of these rings is likely to be the rule rather than the exception with planetary nebulas. That is a surprise, because researchers didn't expect dying stars to expel mass at regular intervals.

The cycles could be related to recurring magnetic activity, astronomers say. An orbiting companion star might also be the cause. Or, perhaps the material is ejected constantly and the bubbles form later, like waves.

-- SPACE.com Staff

Credit: NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Acknowledgment: R. Corradi (Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, Spain) and Z. Tsvetanov (NASA)

Return each weekday for a new SPACE.com Image of the Day.