2025/08/18 by Yuan, Haoyang, Guerrero, Martin A., Parker, Quentin +1
#Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2508.12895
Some planetary nebulae (PNe) host X-ray-emitting hot bubbles shaped by stellar wind interactions and/or harbor X-ray-emitting central stars due to accretion, shocks within their fast stellar winds, or even chromospheric emission from binary companions. In both cases, the properties of the X-ray emission critically probe late-stages of stellar evolution for such low- and intermediate-mass stars. While extant Chandra and XMM-Newton observations have detected X-ray emission in PNe, the numbers known remain very small (∼40) compared to the overall Galactic PNe population (∼4000). We have initiated a project aimed at increasing the sample of known PNe with X-ray emission using both current and new space-based X-ray telescopes such as the Einstein probe. To further investigate their X-ray properties to elucidate what drives current X-ray PN detections, we have cross-searched the SRG \it eROSITA-DE eRASS1 source catalogue and Hong Kong (HASH) PNe Database. Five known X-ray PNe have been detected (Abell 30, NGC 2392, NGC 3242, NGC 5315, and LoTr 5), two new X-ray PNe are revealed (IC 1297 and NGC 2867), one (K 1-27) is removed from previous X-ray compilations, and another 11 previously detected X-ray emitting PNe are not recovered. A comparison of the X-ray flux of detected and undetected X-ray PNe reveals that eROSITA eRASS1 is sensitive to PNe with X-ray fluxes larger than ≈2×10-14 erg~cm-2~s-1. The frequency of occurrence is ≃0.5% among the 1430 HASH True PNe in the eRASS1 footprint.