"...and they smash them all to bits...".

anyway

Hot off the CDS servers is the MASH Planetary Nebula catalogue.

This is the latest incarnation of something historical that used to be
available on a CD as well as via website, and has several
appellations, some of which I forget, but is now called MASH Catalog
of Planetary Nebula (as opposed to Catalogue, maybes Australians and
British expats speak american nowadays?).

It's basically the Southern Hemisphere Planetary Nebula Catalogue for
objects discovered from the AAO/UKST Halpha survery of the Southern
Galactic Plane, likely final version.

Go here

http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/ftp-index?/ftp/cats/V/127

to read about it, the readme file is there.

The datafile needed is MASH.dat, download that into the Guide
directory, and use the TDF given below.

Objects are drawn as planetary nebulae to scale, labelled MASH
Gnnnn_etc, and visible at 5 degrees and less in Guide, as no
magnitudes are given they are simply on at those scales.

A point from the catalogue re likely reality is noted in the right
click help, as well as the size as measured on the Halpha plate, and
more info carries the comments.

Morphological types are also given, but these are not given a key in
the readme file, which is very strange, considering Francois
Ochsenbein is one of the coauthors of the work, but there you go.

Probably they are explained in the published paper.

The Notes and Comments seem to include descriptions of morphological
aspect, anyway.

It's a basic TDF, it plots the 905 things at position, labels 'em
correctly, and gives idea of size and the notes. Not much extra to be
done really, the morphological codes would require inclusion of a look
up table, being too freeform for ready conditional interrogation, even
if someone managed to find where the key was hid.

Just cut and paste the below into a text editor, notepad'll likely
suffice, and save in the Guide 8 directory as MASH_PN.tdf or whatever
you wanna call it, as long as the datafile is called MASH.dat and is
itself stored in the Guide 8 direcotry it don't matter. Under the
User Datasets dialogue it's called MASH Planetary Nebulae, and GOTO
TDF will require the insertion of the Galactic Coordiante ID,
including the G, but doesn't need the MASH prefix, eg G226.4-01.3 .

And that's about it really... ...a catalogue that was a long time in
coming, and I ain't entirely sure it was worth the wait, especially
for amateur observers, and given that despite followup spectra being
taken we still seem ot have a lot of "likely"s and "possible"s in the
catalogue, maybes the Southern Deepsky Officianadoes can comment on that.

Cheers

John


---------cut and paste from next line onwards---------
file MASH.dat
title MASH Planetary Nebulae
RA H 30 2
RA M 33 2
RA S 36 4
de d 41 3
de m 45 2
de s 48 2
sizs 72 6
siz2 79 6
text 4 12
~r 4 12 MASH %s = %[17,12]\n\n
~c 4 12 MASH %s\n
~r 30 10 RA 2000 %R\n
~r 41 9 Dec2000 %D\n\n
~b 72 6 Major Axis %s arcsecs\n
~b 79 6 Minor Axis %s arcsecs\n\n
~b 1 0 T True\n\n
~b 1 0 L Likely\n\n
~b 1 0 P Possible\n\n
~r 1 1 NOTES\n\n
~r128 140 %s\n

pref MASH

epoch 2000
type 3
label spaces
goto spaces
goto case
field 0.00 50.00
shown 1
end
--------only cut and paste up to and including the preceding line-----