<p>The Cat's Eye Nebula roils and radiates in a new composite picture blending <a href="http://science.nationalgeographic.com/wallpaper/science/photos/nebulae-gallery/cats-eye-nebula/">visible light</a> from the <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/index.html">Hubble Space Telescope</a> and x-ray wavelengths (tinted purple) captured by <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html">NASA's</a> orbiting <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/main/index.html">Chandra observatory</a>.</p><p>The image is part of Chandra's first systematic survey of nearby planetary nebulae. So-named because 18th-century stargazers mistook the gas bubbles for gas-giant <a href="http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/planets/">planets</a>, planetary nebulae are glowing shells of material thrown off by dying <a href="http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/universe/stars-article.html">stars</a>.</p><p>Years ago Hubble pictures forced a rethink of how stars die. "Now these Chandra images have helped us get even more data, because x-rays tell us things that Hubble doesn't tell us about the very last stages of the deaths of these stars," astrophysicist <a href="http://www.cis.rit.edu/user/33/">Joel Kastner</a> told National Geographic News.</p><p>(Related picture: <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/photogalleries/100909-hubble-perfect-spiral-space-science-pictures/#/hubbles-strange-spiral-cats-eye-nebula_25773_600x450.jpg">Hubble spies the Cat's-Eye Nebula</a>.)</p><p>—Brian Handwerk</p>