Observations
The Nebula was discovered by William Herschel on February 15, 1786, who likened its appearance to a planetary disk. Cat's Eye was the first planetary nebula to be observed with a spectroscope. It was done by the pioneer spectroscopist William Huggins on August 29, 1864. Huggins' observations, which revealed that nebula's spectrum was non-continuous and made of a few bright lines, were the first indication that planetary nebulae consist of extremely rarefied gases. Since those early observations, NGC 6543 has been observed right across the electromagnetic spectrum.
Read more about this topic: Cat's Eye Nebula
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“Science is a dynamic undertaking directed to lowering the degree of the empiricism involved in solving problems; or, if you prefer, science is a process of fabricating a web of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiments and observations and fruitful of further experiments and observations.”
—James Conant (1893–1978)
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