Planetary Firsts

Have you seen PN G164.8+31.1?

The Strasbourg - ESO Catalogue of Galactic Planetary Nebulae (SEC), the standard reference source published in 1992, lists 1,143 true and probable planetaries, of which less than one hundred were included in the New General Catalog (NGC) of 1888. As late as 1934, when Boris Alexandrovich Vorontsov-Velyaminov published his catalog, only 134 were known. More than 1,000 planetary nebulae were discovered and catalogued within a period of little more than half a century!

Among amateur astronomers the best known planetary catalog is doubtless the Abell Catalog of Planetary Nebulae, compiled by George Abell at Mount Palomar in the 1950's by visual inspection of photographic plates from the recently-completed Palomar Observatory Sky Survey. Earlier, in the 1940's, Rudolph Minkowski at Mount Wilson had discovered several hundred new planetaries by examining objective prism survey plates for objects with H-alpha emission lines but with little or no continuous spectra. Other astronomers who have made significant contributions to the growing list of known planetary nebulae include Guillermo Haro of Herbig - Haro fame; Karl Henize, who compiled the standard list of southern planetaries; and Lubos Kohoutek, co-author of the Perek - Kohoutek Catalogue of Galactic Planetary Nebulae (P-K), published in Prague in 1967.

There are many other well-known names among the discoverers of planetary nebulae, including Walter Baade and Harlow Shapley. One of my favorite astronomers, Milton Humason of Mount Palomar, the mule-driver and janitor turned telescope operator for the notoriously inept Edmund Hubble, has three entries to his credit. His boss even has one himself, although it was more or less a mistake, having already been included in one of the Index Catalogues (IC):

The Strasbourg - ESO Catalog continues and refines the approved practice begun with the P-K Catalog of identifying a planetary nebula by its galactic coordinates (known as PN G# in the SEC). All very proper and scientific, no doubt, but without much appeal to the imagination. It is a bit like renaming San Francisco 37.48N122.24W. Who would want to visit there? Writers from Genesis to Proust have recognized the suggestive power of names. This power is only heightened by adding Number One. Hence my selection of planetary firsts: the first (and sometimes only) entry in somebody's catalog of planetary nebulae discovered in the twentieth century:

[PN G164.8+31.1 is better known as JE 1 to amateur observers.]