Planetary nebula question

[Marvin Jenkins]

I have been studying my Vaslov star charts recently and a niggling question keeps popping into my mind.

There are plenty of PNs that are quite obscure, but they go by the designation PK then some numbers. What does the PK stand for? I realise the P may well be Planetary but nebula spelt with a K surely not?

I thought of the designation IC for galaxies but again K, so can’t be catalog.

Marv

[Craney]

I lifted this from Wiki

"PK" designation comes from the names of Czechoslovakian astronomers Luboš Perek and Luboš Kohoutek, who in 1967 created an extensive catalog of all of the planetary nebulae known in the Milky Way as of 1964. The numbers indicate the position of the object on the sky.  PK 164+31.1" basically represents the planetary nebula that when using the galactic coordinate system.

Edited October 3, 2021 by Craney