Discovery of many planetary nebulae in a nearby galaxy

(This article has been cross posted from SayPeople.com)

Main Point:

Scientists have reported some new planetary nebulae in the Large Magellanic Cloud (IV), i.e. outer LMC.

Published in:

arXiv

Study Further:

Nebula:

It is a region or cloud of interstellar dust and gas appearing variously as a hazy bright or dark patch. It is also called as nebulosity.

Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC):

LMC is a large nearby irregular galaxy. It is the third closest galaxy to the Milky Way. It has a mass of about 10 billion times the mass of the Sun, i.e. 10^10 solar masses, and a diameter of about 14,000 light-years.

It can be seen as a faint cloud in the night sky of the southern hemisphere and appears more than 20 times the width of the full moon.

Research:

In the present study, researchers used the maps from the Magellanic Cloud Emission Line Survey (MCELS) and the UK Schmidt Telescope (UKST) Hα survey, to study planetary nebulae. They reported 63 outer region LMC planetary nebulae for the first time. These nebulae are considered among the faintest and most evolved nebulae in the outer region of LMC.

Discovery of these new planetary nebulae added about 9% of the amount to the known amount of the LMC planetary nebulae population overall and about 40% (considerably larger amount) of those nebulae are present in the outer regions.

You can see the images of the new discoveries in the paper mentioned in the reference.

Research Suggestions:

It has been suggested that there would be about 900 planetary nebulae in the LMC and at this time we are aware of 715 nebulae in the LMC. You can work on this project of finding further nebulae.

Reference:

Warren A. Reid, & Quentin A. Parker (2013). A New Population of Planetary Nebulae Discovered in the Large Magellanic
Cloud (IV): The Outer LMC MNRAS arXiv: 1308.5484v1