Lists of Confirmed Planetary Nebulae in the Magellanic Clouds

Extract

Very deep, blue and red-sensitive objective-prism plates, taken with the Curtis Schmidt telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, were used to survey both Magellanic Clouds for unresolved objects which could be classified as highly probable planetary nebulae. The high sensitivity of the baked Kodak IIIa-J emulsion at 5000 Å made it possible to detect the N₁ and N₂ lines of [OIII] in fainter objects than previously observed. A number of emission-line stars, compact HII regions, and very-low-excitation objects, formerly considered to be probable or possible planetaries, were recognized and excluded. The final lists contain 27 confirmed planetaries in the SMC and 100 in the LMC, a ratio equivalent to the estimated ratio of total mass in the two systems. As would be expected, most of these objects had been detected in previous objective-prism surveys but some apparently new planetaries were found.