Planetary Nebulae and How to Find Them: Color Identification in Big Broadband Surveys

Abstract

Planetary nebulae (PNe) provide tests of stellar evolution, can serve as tracers of chemical evolution in the Milky Way and other galaxies, and are also used as a calibrator of the cosmological distance ladder. Current and upcoming large scale photometric surveys have the potential to complete the census of PNe in our galaxy and beyond, but it is a challenge to disambiguate partially or fully unresolved PNe from the myriad other sources observed in these surveys. Here we carry out synthetic observations of nebular models to determine $ugrizy$ color-color spaces that can successfully identify PNe among billions of other sources. As a primary result we present a grid of synthetic absolute magnitudes for PNe at various stages of their evolution, and we make comparisons with real PNe colors from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We find that the $r-i$ versus $g-r$, and the $r-i$ versus $u-g$, color-color diagrams show the greatest promise for cleanly separating PNe from stars, background galaxies, and quasars. Finally, we consider the potential harvest of PNe from upcoming large surveys. For example, for typical progenitor host star masses of $\sim$3 M${}_{\odot }$, we find that the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) should be sensitive to virtually all PNe in the Magellanic Clouds with extinction up to $A_{\mathrm{V}}$ of $\sim$5 mag; out to the distance of Andromeda, LSST would be sensitive to the youngest PNe (age less than $\sim$6800 yr) and with $A_{\mathrm{V}}$ up to 1 mag.

arXiv commentSubmitted to ApJ; 15 pages, 10 figures, 5 tables, 3 ladders, 2 chairs

References in corpus (53)

• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• The NumPy array: a structure for efficient numerical computation
• The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The 'Forbidden' Abundance of Oxygen in the Sun
• An eclipsing binary distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud accurate to 2 per cent
• A Reappraisal of the Solar Photospheric C/O Ratio
• New models for the evolution of Post-Asymptotic Giant Branch stars and Central Stars of Planetary Nebulae
• Post-Asymptotic Giant Branch Evolution of Low- and Intermediate-Mass Stars. Preliminary Results
• The Aao/Ukst Supercosmos H-alpha Survey (SHS)
• The Origin and Shaping of Planetary Nebulae: Putting the Binary Hypothesis to the Test
• The VST Photometric Halpha Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+)
• The Araucaria Project. The distance to the Small Magellanic Cloud from late-type eclipsing binaries
• Planetary Nebulae: Observational Properties, Mimics, and Diagnostics
• A deep kinematic survey of planetary nebulae in the Andromeda Galaxy using the Planetary Nebula Spectrograph
• A spectroscopic atlas of post-AGB stars and planetary nebulae selected from the IRAS Point Source Catalogue
• The Globular Cluster System of NGC 5128 II. Ages, Metallicities, Kinematics, and Formation
• Do most planetary nebulae derive from binaries? I Population synthesis model of the galactic planetary nebula population produced by singlestars and binaries
• Isolated vs. Common Envelope Dynamos in Planetary Nebula Progenitors
• HASH: the Hong Kong/AAO/Strasbourg H-alpha planetary nebula database
• The metallicity profile of M31 from spectroscopy of hundreds of HII regions and PNe
• Magnetic-Driven Winds from Post-AGB Stars: Solutions for High Speed Winds and Extreme Collimation
• The Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury VIII: A Wide-Area, High-Resolution Map of Dust Extinction in M31
• IPHAS and the symbiotic stars. I. Selection method and first discoveries
• Why Magnetic Fields Cannot be the Main Agent Shaping Planetary Nebulae
• The metallicity extremes of the Sagittarius dSph using SALT spectroscopy of PNe
• The extended Planetary Nebula Spectrograph (ePN.S) early-type galaxy survey. The kinematic diversity of stellar halos and the relation between halo transition scale and stellar mass
• Planetary nebula or symbiotic Mira? Near infrared colours mark the difference
• A machine learning approach for identification and classification of symbiotic stars using 2MASS and WISE
• IPHAS and the symbiotic stars. II. New discoveries and a sample of the most common mimics
• The evolution of planetary nebulae. VIII. True expansion rates and visibility times
• Abundances of PNe in the Outer Disk of M31
• IC10: the history of the nearest starburst galaxy through its Planetary Nebula and HII region populations
• Formation and X-ray emission from Hot Bubbles in Planetary Nebulae. I. Hot Bubble formation
• Resolving the Disc-Halo Degeneracy I: A Look at NGC 628
• The mysterious cut-off of the Planetary Nebula Luminosity Function
• The Fornax Cluster VLT Spectroscopic Survey II - Planetary Nebulae kinematics within 200 kpc of the cluster core
• The kinematics of the outer halo of M87 as mapped by planetary nebulae
• Chemical Abundances of Planetary Nebulae in the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy
• Planetary Nebulae Kinematics in M31
• Three dynamically distinct stellar populations in the halo of M49
• Distinguishing between symbiotic stars and planetary nebulae
• Establishing the Galactic Centre Distance Using VVV Bulge RR Lyrae Variables
• Flux calibration of the AAO/UKST SuperCOSMOS H-alpha Survey
• The Planetary Nebulae Population in the Nuclear Regions of M31: the SAURON view
• Hunting for Extremely Faint Planetary Nebulae in the SDSS Spectroscopic Database
• New Galactic Planetary Nebulae selected by radio and multi-wavelength characteristics
• A Search for Planetary Nebulae With the SDSS: the outer regions of M31
• Planetary Nebulae in the UWISH2 survey
• The population of planetary nebulae near the Galactic centre: chemical abundances
• Common envelope evolution through planetary nebula eyes
• VLT/FORS1 spectrophotometry of the first planetary nebula discovered in the Phoenix dwarf galaxy
• Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury IX: A Photometric Survey of Planetary Nebulae in M31
• Central Stars of Planetary Nebulae in IPHAS and SDSS

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Catalog of Planetary Nebulae detected by GALEX and corollary optical surveys
• Unveiling compact planetary nebulae: Broad-band survey analysis and LAMOST confirmation