New Bulge Planetary Nebulae from the Aao/ukst Halpha Survey

Abstract

<p>We present new Galactic Bulge Planetary Nebulae (PNe) revealed by the latest techniques of point-spread function matching (Bond at al. 2001) applied to SuperCOSMOS data of paired H-alpha/SR survey Bulge fields (known as difference imaging). This technique provides cleaner cancellation of normal stars by being able to account for spatially varying psf’s in the highly crowded Bulge fields (compared to quotient imaging used previously (Peyaud 2001)). The identification from candidate to true PNe via spectroscopy was performed at SAAO/1.9m and at the UKST/6df telescopes. Until now the number of Bulge PNe available has been modest (<350). This program has already been able to double that number. This significant new sample will provide an unparalleled opportunity to use them as valuable test particles for dynamical studies since these PNe are nominally at known distance (e.g. Beaulieu et al. 1999). Furthermore the number of bulge PNe available for such studies has until now also been quite small (e.g. Zijlstra et al. 1997 and Beaulieu at al. 1999) so their potential as test particles of bulge dynamics and PNe evolution has remained largely unrealized. Here we present some preliminary results.</p>