Three New Candidate Planetary Nebulae near the Galactic Center
Abstract
We report the discovery of three candidate planetary nebulae (PNe) detected in lines of sight close to our Galactic Center: G0.098-0.051, G0.399+0.208, and G359.963-0.120. These objects are identified by being compact continuum sources with exceptionally high excitation as seen in spectra of forbidden lines taken with Spitzer Space Telescope's Infrared Spectrograph and downloaded from the Spitzer Heritage Archive. In particular, the high excitation lines include [Na III] 7.32 micron, [O IV] 25.9 micron, and [Ne V] 14.3 and 24.3 micron. Such lines are not seen in Galactic H II regions but only are found in PNe and supernova remnants; we exclude the last by the existance of the co-located continuum sources of size a few arcsec. We note that none of these sources has any significant associated emission from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which is otherwise common in the Galactic Center and in PNe. We will present spectra, abundance analyses, additional data from radio and near-infrared telescopes, and photoionization and shock models computed with Cloudy (Ferland et al. 2013) and MAPPINGS III (Allen et al. 2008).
- Publication:
-
IAU General Assembly
- Pub Date:
- August 2015
- Bibcode:
- 2015IAUGA..2251870S