Beautifull colors!!
What exactly is it by the way?

Marvellous,agree with PuMa.

Basically it's a dying star surrounded by a "cacoon", consisting of gas shells and jets of gas, created when the star loses its outer layers of gas. The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543 ) is estimated as being 1000 years old and is 3000 light years away.

Beautiful, but I wished they hadn't used pink in some parts of the picture... ^_^ Pink doesn't really make it for me.

I like the cat's eye nebula...hehe it's my user icon

Very beautiful. They should make an iTunes/Windows Media Player visualization like this. Might be pretty trippy in motion...

Very nice picture, I just have one question, if it's 1000 years old and 3000 light-years away, how can we see it?

Either it is a typo on NASA's part or, and this is more likely, the image reflects the Nebula at the stage when it was 1000 years old. Thus it should actually be 4000 years old! I'm no astronomer, but that would be my best guess.

If it is 3000 light years away and the nebula is 1000 years old then the light from it should be reaching us in around 2000 years. I suspect a typo.

This photo is made by the awesome colours

How on earth does nature actually produce these colours?

Oh , i forgot, its not on Earth.