Nick Hewitt started a programme to observe Abell planetaries a few years ago and I would like to continue this, although so far there has been little response. These planetaries were discovered by George Abell in the 1950s examining the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS) plates. They are usually large and therefore very old (in planetary nebulae terms). None of the objects are easy, and visual observers in particular will generally need large telescopes, pristine skies and nebula filters.

Owen Brazell and myself, observing at the Equinox star party in 2003, observed several through Owen's 20-inch Obsession, but none jumped out of the eyepiece at us. I did see Abell 21-the Medusa Nebula - from relatively poor skies (mag. 5.2) at my previous house in Hampshire in my 14-inch, but I have generally failed more often than I have succeeded on others. However they should make good targets for imagers looking for something different. If anyone wants the list of Abell planetaries please contact me. There were 86 planetaries in his original list, but some were misclassified. Owen has also recently informed me that Abell 17 has just been reclassified as a plate fault - so much for all those US observers who claim to have seen it!

For those with poorer skies or smaller telescopes there are still plenty of under observed planetaries in the NGC and IC. I can understand people wanting to image M27 and M97 as they are beautiful objects, but there are lots of others that show considerable detail and I would like to put together a collection of images and visual appearances for the Section records. There are 94 planetaries in the NGC with many suitable for northern observers and some suitable targets for the next few months include the following: