The Cats Eye Nebula Postcard

A gorgeous design featuring a composite image of the Cat's Eye nebula from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope. This famous nebula represents a phase of stellar evolution after a star like our Sun runs out of fuel. In this phase, a star becomes an expanding red giant and sheds some of its outer layers, eventually leaving behind a hot core that collapses to form a dense white dwarf star. A fast wind emanating from the hot core rams into the ejected atmosphere, pushes it outward, and creates the graceful filamentary structures. Image credit: NASA/Chandra www.nasa.gov