juliensimon/planetary-nebulae

Planetary Nebulae (MUSE Survey)

Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble

Part of a dataset collection on Hugging Face.

Dataset description

Catalog of planetary nebulae from the MUSE (Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) survey on ESO's Very Large Telescope, with positions and [OIII] 5007 magnitudes across multiple host galaxies. From Jacoby et al. (2024, ApJS, 271, 40).

Planetary nebulae (PNe) are glowing shells of ionized gas expelled by intermediate-mass stars (1-8 solar masses) at the end of their lives. They are important distance indicators and tracers of stellar populations and chemical enrichment. The [OIII] 5007 Angstrom line is the single brightest emission feature and serves as the standard detection and distance measurement tool through the planetary nebula luminosity function (PNLF), one of the most reliable secondary distance indicators in extragalactic astronomy.

The MUSE integral-field spectrograph provides simultaneous imaging and spectroscopy over a 1x1 arcminute field of view with 0.2-arcsecond spatial sampling, enabling detection of PNe that would be missed by traditional narrow-band imaging surveys. MUSE's spectral coverage from 4700 to 9300 Angstroms captures not only [OIII] and H-alpha but also diagnostic lines that constrain nebular excitation, chemical abundances, and central star temperature.

Schema

Column	Type	Description	Sample	Null %
galaxy	object	Host galaxy name (e.g. 'NGC 628', 'NGC 474'); each galaxy was surveyed with multiple MUSE pointings to build a complete PNe census	NGC253	0.0%
pn_id	object	Planetary nebula identifier within the survey, unique per galaxy; format varies by field	PN30	0.0%
field	object	MUSE pointing field identifier within the host galaxy; a single galaxy may have multiple fields to cover its extent	P1	0.0%
ra_deg	float64	Right ascension of the planetary nebula in decimal degrees, ICRS J2000.0 (0-360)	11.89023	0.0%
dec_deg	float64	Declination of the planetary nebula in decimal degrees, ICRS J2000.0 (-90 to +90)	-25.3032	0.0%
m5007_mag	float64	Apparent magnitude in the [OIII] 5007 Angstrom emission line; this is the single brightest emission feature of PNe and the standard detection/distance tool via the planetary nebula luminosity function (PNLF); brighter (lower) values indicate more luminous PNe; the PNLF bright-end cutoff at M* ~ -4.5 mag is empirically constant across galaxy types	27.3	0.0%
m5007_err	float64	1-sigma uncertainty on the [OIII] 5007 magnitude (mag)	0.11	0.0%
lambda_5007_flux	float64	Measured [OIII] 5007 Angstrom emission line flux in instrumental units; used to derive m5007_mag; null where flux measurement was not possible	5010.64	0.0%
flag	object	Quality or classification flag from the survey; indicates detection confidence or special properties of the planetary nebula	T	42.2%

Quick stats

• 1,715 planetary nebulae
• 1,715 with [OIII] 5007 magnitude measurements
• 20 host galaxies surveyed
• [OIII] m5007 range: 24.5 to 31.2 mag

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/planetary-nebulae", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# PNLF (Planetary Nebula Luminosity Function) per galaxy
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

galaxies = df["galaxy"].value_counts().head(4).index
fig, axes = plt.subplots(2, 2, figsize=(10, 8))
for ax, gal in zip(axes.flat, galaxies):
    sub = df[(df["galaxy"] == gal) & df["m5007_mag"].notna()]
    ax.hist(sub["m5007_mag"], bins=20, edgecolor="k", alpha=0.7)
    ax.set_xlabel("[OIII] m5007 (mag)")
    ax.set_ylabel("Count")
    ax.set_title(f"{gal} ({len(sub)} PNe)")
plt.suptitle("Planetary Nebula Luminosity Functions")
plt.tight_layout()
plt.show()

Data source

https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-3?-source=J/ApJS/271/40

Related datasets

• juliensimon/open-star-clusters

• juliensimon/globular-clusters

Citation

@dataset{planetary_nebulae,
  title = {Planetary Nebulae (MUSE Survey)},
  author = {juliensimon},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/planetary-nebulae},
  publisher = {Hugging Face}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0