Title: The new Hong-Kong/AAO/Strasbourg multi-wavelength and spectroscopic PNe database

Speaker: Quentin Parker (Hong Kong University)  

Time & place: Thursday, 3:00pm, June 25th, lecture Hall, 3rd floor  

Abstract: We are in a golden age of PN discovery. This advent of high sensitivity, wide-field, narrow-band surveys of the Galactic plane undertaken on the UKST in Australia, the Isaac Newton telescope on La Palma and now the VST in Chile have facilitated this process. These telescopes and their H-alpha surveys have provided significant Planetary Nebulae (PNe) discoveries that have more than doubled the totals accumulated by all telescopes over the previous 250 years. Importantly, these PNe are not the just the same as those found in previous catalogues. Most new PNe are more obscured, evolved and of lower surface brightness than previous compilations while others are faint but compact and more distant. This has required an extensive and time-consuming programme of spectroscopic confirmation on a variety of 2m and 4m telescopes that is now largely complete. The scope of any future large-scale PNe studies, particularly those of a statistical nature or undertaken to understand true PNe diversity and evolution should now reflect this fresh PN population landscape of the combined sample of ~3500 Galactic PNe now available. Such studies should take into account these recent major discoveries and the massive, high sensitivity, high resolution, multi-wavelength imaging surveys now available across much of the electromagnetic spectrum. Following this motivation we provide, for the first time, an accessible, reliable, on-line "one-stop" SQL database for essential, up-to date information for all known Galactic PN. We have attempted to: i) Reliably remove the many PN mimics/false ID's that have biased previous compilations and subsequent studies; ii) Provide accurate, updated positions, sizes, morphologies, radial velocities, fluxes, multi-wavelength imagery and spectroscopy; iii) Link to CDS/Vizier and hence provide archival history for each object; iv) Provide an interface to sift, select, browse, collate, investigate, download and visualise the complete currently known Galactic PNe diaspora and v) provide the community with the most complete and reliable data with which to undertake new science. 

Biog: Quentin obtained his PhD degree from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He joined the faculty at Macquarie in April 2002 after stints at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh and the Anglo-Australian observatory. Quentin was responsible for helping to develop instrumentation at at the UKST and was also P.I. for the UKST H-alpha survey. His research activities are mainly but not exclusively associated with Wide Field Astronomy, including large-scale redshift surveys, low-surface brightness galaxies, supernova remnants and especially Planetary Nebulae.