The Cat’s Eye Nebula (also known as NGC 6543) is a planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Draco. Our star was recently eclipsed by the moon, this nebula was an exploded star (about 1000 years ago). The Cat’s Eye Nebula cannot be seen by naked eye and lies about three thousand light-years from Earth. In my telescope it is small and dim.

NGC 6543 is in the center of the frame.

North (toward Polaris) is up in the photo. The picture was taken with a fully modified Canon Rebel camera (this is my one shot color camera) on a TEC 140 telescope in the Alpenglow-Torrey House Observatory in the dark sky community of Torrey, Utah (Bortle 2-3).

10 20 second sub-frames were used and stacked in Deep Sky Stacker = three minute 20 second photo. Binned 2X2. Unguided, no darks or flats. Processed in Photoshop (CS5).

Location in the night sky of the photo:

Source: Astrometry.net