Ancient 'ghost' planetary nebulae discovered with amateur telescopes

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that advanced amateur telescopes and image processing can uncover ancient, faint planetary nebulae, revealing new candidates and insights into their ages and central stars.

Contribution

The paper introduces a method using amateur equipment and image processing to discover and analyze faint, ancient planetary nebulae previously difficult to detect.

Findings

Discovered three new candidate planetary nebulae with amateur telescopes.

Estimated nebular ages between 50 and 100 thousand years.

Identified potential variability in the central star of JAM 2.

Abstract

As planetary nebulae evolve, they fade and dissipate into the surrounding interstellar medium making them harder to detect. Modern, advanced amateur equipment can help to uncover this hidden population of ancient 'ghost' planetary nebulae. Via careful processing of long-integration, narrow-band imagery with modest aperture telescopes at a dark-sky site, we reveal three new candidate planetary nebulae (JAM 2, JAM 3, and JAM 4). Each measures several arcminutes across with [O iii] surface brightnesses of order 30 mag arcsec$^{-2}$. For each nebula, we identify a candidate central star, the parallaxes of which lead to nebular age estimates in the range 50-100 thousand years. The candidate central star of JAM 2 also shows indications of photometric variability, potentially due to spots on the stellar surface.