Autodesk Gallery Powers of Design Exhibit: 10**15 Cat's Eye Nebula

I work out of our office on One Market Street in San Francisco. My standup-desk is right across from our Gallery at One Market. One of our newer exhibits is called Powers of Design. It was first featured at the Technology Entertainment & Design (TED) conference last year. Powers of Design depicts the size of everything from the inconceivably small to the mind-blowingly large. I thought I'd cover the exhibit elements, one at a time, over the next few months. I started small and am working my way up.

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Cat’s Eye Nebula as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Image courtesy of NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).

10¹⁵ MAGNITUDE
1,000,000,000,000,000 m
1 trillion kilometers

Cat’s Eye Nebula

9.5 Trillion Kilometers

The Cat’s Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) resides in the constellation Draco (Latin for “dragon”), about 3,300 light-years from Earth. Coincidentally, dragon eyes look just like cat eyes, although this is really just a guess since dragons are mythical.

With a diameter of nearly 9.5 trillion kilometers, NGC 6543 is one of the most complex nebulae known, revealing remarkable structures such as knots, jets, bubbles, and sinewy arc-like features. In the center of the Cat’s Eye (the pupil if you will), there is a bright, hot star approximately 10,000 times as luminous as the sun. Nearly 1,000 years ago this star lost its outer envelope, producing the nebula.

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This thing is 10 times the size of our entire solar system!

Thanks to Global Content Manager, Matt Tierney, for the images and text that comprise the exhibit element. This is just one of the many exhibits in the gallery at One Market in San Francisco. The gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays from 12 pm to 5 pm, and admission is free. Visit us.

Previous posts on this topic include:

• 10^-15 Protons and Neutrons
• 10^-14 Atomic Nucleus of a Uranium Atom
• 10^-13 Nada, Zilch, Zero, Zip
• 10^-12 Gamma Rays
• 10^-11 Fluorine Ion
• 10^-10 Wavelength of Hard X-Rays
• 10^-9 Carbon Nanotubes
• 10^-8 Molecular Transport Nano Robot
• 10^-7 HIV Virus
• 10^-6 Red Blood Cells
• 10^-5 Sand
• 10^-4 Microelectromechanical Systems
• 10^-3 Sonata Silicium Watch Components
• 10^-2 Lego
• 10^-1 Prosthetic Fairing
• 10⁰ Biome Concept Car
• 10¹ Ma'erkang Housing Reconstruction
• 10² Shanghai Tower
• 10³ Bay Bridge
• 10⁴ Masdar City
• 10⁵ Palm Islands
• 10⁶ The Moon
• 10⁷ Earth
• 10⁸ Jupiter
• 10⁹ The Sun
• 10¹⁰ Distance Light Travels in 34 Seconds
• 10¹¹ Distance from Jupiter to the Sun
• 10¹² Distance from Pluto to the Sun
• 10¹³ Voyager 2
• 10¹⁴ The Solar System

Future blog posts will cover:

• 10¹⁶ Pillars of Creation
• 10¹⁷ Great Orion Nebula
• 10¹⁸ M15 Globular Cluster
• 10¹⁹ Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy
• 10²⁰ Triangulum Galaxy
• 10²¹ The Milky Way
• 10²² IC 1101
• 10²³ Local Group of Galaxies
• 10²⁴ The Local Supercluster
• 10²⁵ 3C 273
• 10²⁶ Outer Limit of the Universe

Measurement is alive in the lab.