NGC 6543 is one of the few planetary nebulae (PNe) whose X-ray emission has
been shown to be extended and originate from hot interior gas. Using FUSE
observations we have now detected nebular O VI emission from NGC 6543. Its
central star, with an effective temperature of ~50,000 K, is too cool to
photoionize O V, so the O VI ions must have been produced by thermal collisions
at the interface between the hot interior gas and the cool nebular shell. We
modeled the O VI emission incorporating thermal conduction, but find that
simplistic assumptions for the AGB and fast wind mass loss rates overproduce
X-ray emission and O VI emission. We have therefore adopted the pressure of the
interior hot gas for the interface layer and find that expected O VI emission
to be comparable to the observations.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, using emulateapj.cls style. Accepted for
publication in ApJ Letter