I first tried imaging this nebula back in August 2023, with the RASA 11. With such a wide field setup, and 4 hours of exposure, the Cat's Eye was tiny. I could barely make out any detail. But it was an intriguing enough object that I knew I'd have to return.
So two years later, this time with an f/11 setup, I captured about 23 hours of data - still with a color sensor. This time, I got a much better result. The closer I get to this place, the weirder it looks. Being a lot smaller than most of the other nebulae we've explored together, it's hard to get close and personal with the Cat's Eye. It's a few thousand light years distant in the northern part of the sky, winding its way through the constellation Draco (the Dragon). Like other so-called planetary nebulae, what we're seeing here is a dying star that in its convulsions has expelled its outer layers in a series of bursts to produce this extraordinary view.
It is, for sure, one of the most complex and weird objects I've tried to photograph. And it was actually more difficult than I expected to process, because the core is so surprisingly bright. The challenge was to enhance the fainter nebulous surroundings without completely blowing out the bright center. 

Like other nebulae we’ve explored together, this is a stellar nursery where new stars come into being. Indeed, the young, hot stars you see in the lower part of the image originated from the nebula itself. The intense energy from these stars—in the form of ultraviolet light and particle radiation—is what drives the star creation process, carving out the enormous, cavernous expanses that give this region its lovely "clamshell" appearance.
The blue areas are indicative of ionized oxygen, but that is not to say that these areas are especially rich in oxygen atoms. Rather, since it takes significantly more energy to ionize oxygen than hydrogen, the "stuff" glowing blue is actually a map of intense radiation. That hard-to-miss blue region just right of center is the powerhouse of the nebula, fueled by a massive binary star system embedded in the core. Above and to the left, look out for a distinct blue bubble, caused by super-energetic gases pushing outwards against the surrounding medium.
In contrast, the lovely reds and golds are the result of energized hydrogen. Here, the energy level of the impacting radiation is just enough to make hydrogen glow, but not quite enough to strip electrons from the larger oxygen atoms.
What I find most captivating are all those beautiful protrusions that look like fingers or pillars. These are areas that resisted being blasted away by the onslaught of radiation. The dark, inky-black pillars are essentially the same as the gold ones—just seen in silhouette against the bright background. Since they are carved out of the nebula by stellar winds, these pillars naturally line up with the wind direction; see how they all point like weather vanes toward the source of that radiation, specifically that bluish expanse in the lower part of the image.
Notice how the edges of those reddish-copper and gold areas have a beautiful "yellow frosting"? These are the front lines in the battle zone—the areas receiving the brunt of the incoming radiative energy.
Likewise, the tips of those pillars receive the full force of the stellar winds, meeting them head-on. The pressure becomes so intense that it causes clumping to occur, resulting in a process called "local gravitational condensation." Under these conditions, material collapses under its own weight until sufficient pressure builds to trigger nuclear fusion, and a new star ignites.