Cat's Eye Nebula - Open Questions

Open Questions

Despite intensive study, the Cat's Eye Nebula still holds many mysteries. The concentric rings surrounding the inner nebula seem to have been ejected at intervals of from a few hundred to a few thousand years, a timescale which is rather difficult to explain. Thermal pulsations, which cause formation of planetary nebulae, are believed to take place at intervals of tens of thousands of years, while smaller surface pulsations are thought to occur at intervals of years to decades. A mechanism which would eject material over the timescales required to form the concentric rings in the Cat's Eye Nebula is not known yet.

The spectra of planetary nebulae consist of emission lines superimposed on a continuum. The emission lines may be formed either by collisional excitation of ions in the nebula, or by recombination of electrons with ions. Collisionally excited lines are generally much stronger than recombination lines, and so have historically been used to determine abundances. However, recent studies have found that abundances derived from recombination lines seen in the spectrum of NGC 6543 are some three times higher than those derived from collisionally excited lines. The cause of this discrepancy is probably related to spatial temperature fluctuations inside the nebula.