Compact Galactic Planetary Nebulae

Planetary nebulae (PN) are the gaseous relics of evolved stars, and mark the termination of the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) phase of stellar evolution for stars with initial masses less than about 8 M_☉. There are many unresolved questions about how a PN is formed, particularly for non-spherical nebulae, and how their morphology changes as they expand into the interstellar medium. Up until now the key link to understanding the formation of PN are the pre-planetary nebulae (PPN; sometimes inaccurately called “proto-planetary nebulae”), which are gaseous remnants of AGB stars prior to being ionized by the central star as it evolves rapidly to high temperature. We have extended this line of study with high-resolution images of the angularly smallest known (but little studied) Galactic planetary nebulae to study their shapes at the earliest phase of their lifetimes.

Sample Selection & Imaging

We found that this sample is a heterogenious mix of new and well-evolved PNe with central star intrinsic brightnesses typical of most Galactic PNe, but they are typically more distant and the emission is much more attenuated because of intervening interstellar dust extinction. Of the youngest (i.e., physically smallest) subset of PNe in our sample, the macroscopic morphological features are already apparent, suggesting that PNe are shaped in a significant way by forces that act prior to the onset of nebular ionization. The statistical distance estimates are quite high for most targets in this sample, so we expect to learn much more about the physical properties once accurate parallactic distances are available in the GAIA survey.

The Galactic planetary nebula images presented here were for the most part obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope/Wide-Field Camera 3 (WFC3), as a part of the GO program 11657. These nebulae were selected for study on the basis of published angular sizes being no larger than 5 arcsec. The HST filters were selected to determine the nebular morphology in the light of [O_III] 5007Å, and to maximize the chance that the central star would be detected above the glow of the nebular emission. The typical size of the images presented below is 15×15 arcsec (379×379 WFC3 pixels), although a few are larger because the PNe turned out to be larger. All images have the same angular scale, and have a log intensity stretch. The orientation is defined by the spacecraft roll angle at the time of the exposure, so that North is NOT at the top of each image. Each PN name links to the available information in the Strasbourg-ESO Catalogue of Galactic Planetary Nebulae (Acker et al. 1992).

Also shown in the right-most column are 60×60 arcsec multi-color renderings (linear intensity scaling) of images from the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) at the location of the targets. The scale of the WISE images is 1.38 arcsec/pix, with North-East to the upper-left of the array. Click the images to enlarge them. Basic observables (position, fluxes, size, etc.) may be found in this CSV file.

Spectroscopy

A program of optical spectroscopy is underway, using the Goodman High-Throughput Spectrograph at the SOAR 4.3m telescope in Chile. Team members can review the GHTS Data Notebook website.

Data and analysis of IR spectra from Spitzer/IRS was published in a series of papers, two of which are listed in the next section.

Acknowledgements

Partial support for this program was provided by NASA through grant GO–11657 from Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5–26555. Additional support was provided by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad under project AYA2014–55840P. The investigators of this program request that anyone using data from this program cite one or more of the following papers, as appropriate:

Compact Galactic Planetary Nebulae: A HST/WFC3 Morphological Catalog, and a Study of their Role in the Galaxy

Stanghellini, L., Shaw, R.A., & Villaver, E., 2016, A&A, 593, A29

Compact Planetary Nebulae in the Galactic Disk: Analysis of the Central Stars

Moreno-Ibáñez, M., Villaver, E., Shaw, R.A., & Stanghellini, L., 2016, A&A, 593, A29

Infrared Study of Fullerene Planetary Nebulae

García-Hernández, D. A., Villaver, E., García-Lario, P., Acosta-Pulido, J. A., Manchado, A., Stanghellini, L., Shaw, R. A., & Cataldo, F. 2012, ApJ, 760, 107

The Nature of Dust in Compact Planetary Nebulae from Spitzer Spectra

Stanghellini, L., García-Hernández, D. A., García-Lario, P., Davies, J. E., Shaw, R. A., Villaver, E., Manchado, A., & Perea-Calderón, J. V. 2012, ApJ, 753, 172

See also the Copyright notice in the footer below.

Gallery

Object	[O III] 5007	F200LP	F350LP	F814W	WISE 3-color
Object	[O III] 5007	F200LP	F350LP	F814W	WISE 3-color
PNG 000.8-07.6 [H2-46] c=0.39 C-rich dust
PNG 011.7-06.6 [M1-55] c=0.83 Not a PN?
PNG 014.0-05.5 [VV3-5] c=1.24 Featureless dust
PNG 014.3-05.5 [VV3-6] c=1.11 C-rich dust: aromatic
PNG 021.1-05.9 [M1-63] c=0.54
PNG 025.3-04.6 [K4-8] c=0.50 O-rich dust
PNG 026.5-03.0 [Pe1-19] c=0.99
PNG 042.9-06.9 [NGC6807] G-B image c=0.41 O-rich dust
PNG 044.1+05.8 [CTSS 2] c=1.44 Peculiar dust
PNG 048.5+04.2 [K4-16] c=1.66 C-rich dust
PNG 052.9-02.7 [K3-41] c=1.24 C-rich dust
PNG 053.3+24.0 [Vy1-2] G-B image c=0.27
PNG 059.9+02.0 [K3-39] c=2.93 C-rich dust
PNG 063.8-03.3 [K3-54] c=? C-rich dust
PNG 068.7+01.9 [K4-41] c=1.64 O-rich dust
PNG 068.7+14.8 [Sp4-1] c=0.38 C-rich dust
PNG 079.9+06.4 [K3-56] G-B image c=1.43 O-rich dust
PNG 097.6-02.4 [M2-50] G-B image c=1.04 O-rich dust
PNG 098.2+04.9 [K3-60][M2-50] c=2.47
PNG 104.1+01.0 [Bl2-1, M2-50] c=2.92 C-rich dust
PNG 107.4-02.6 [K3-87][M2-50] c=1.44 C-rich dust
PNG 184.0-02.1 [M1-5, M2-50] c=? C-rich dust
PNG 205.8-26.7 [MaC2-1] c=? C-rich dust
PNG 263.0-05.5 [PB 2] c=0.85 C-rich dust
PNG 264.4-12.7 [He2-5] C-rich dust G-B image c=0.32
PNG 274.1+02.5 [He2-34] c=2.71 Not a PN?
PNG 275.3-04.7 [He2-21] c=0.80 C-rich dust
PNG 278.6-06.7 [He2-26] c=0.50 C-rich dust
PNG 285.4+01.5 [Pe1-1] G-B image SOAR image c=1.87 C-rich dust
PNG 285.4+02.2 [Pe2-7] G-B image c=1.28 Featureless dust
PNG 286.0-06.5 [He2-41] c=0.70 C-rich dust
PNG 289.8+07.7 [He2-63] G-B image c=0.35 Featureless dust
PNG 294.9-04.3 [He2-68] G-B image c=1.53 C-rich dust
PNG 295.3-09.3 [He2-62] c=0.44 O-rich dust
PNG 296.3-03.0 [He2-73] G-B image c=1.40 Mixed-chemistry dust
PNG 309.0+00.8 [He2-96] G-B image c=2.03 Mixed-chemistry dust
PNG 309.5-02.9 [MaC1-2] c=2.08 C-rich dust
PNG 311.1+03.4 [He2-101] c=1.85 Not a PN
PNG 324.8-01.1 [He2-133] G-B image c=3.34 Mixed-chemistry dust
PNG 327.1-01.8 [He2-140] G-B image c=1.98 Mixed-chemistry dust
PNG 327.8-06.1 [He2-158] G-B image c=0.51 Mixed-chemistry dust
PNG 334.8-07.4 [He3-1312, SaSt2-12] G-B image c=0.55 O-rich dust
PNG 336.9+08.3 [StWr4-10, Sa1-3] c=1.47 O-rich dust
PNG 340.9-04.6 [Sa1-5] c=1.57 Featureless dust
PNG 341.5-09.1 [He2-248] c=0.40 Featureless dust
PNG 343.4+11.9 [H1-1] G-B image c=0.55 O-rich dust
PNG 344.2+04.7 [Vd1-1] c=1.17 O-rich dust
PNG 344.8+03.4 [Vd1-3] c=0.57 C-rich dust
PNG 345.0+04.3 [Vd1-2] c=1.53 O-rich dust
PNG 348.4-04.1 [Ha1-21] c=1.72 Mixed-chemistry dust
PNG 348.8-09.0 [He2-306] c=? Featureless dust
PNG 351.3+07.6 [H1-4] c=0.69 O-rich dust
PNG 356.5+01.5 [Th3-55] c=2.77 O-rich dust
PNG 358.6+07.8 [M3-36, He2-203] c=1.05