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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2017
Space astronomy has made major and ever increasing contributions to planetary nebula research. Three astronomical satellites – Rosat, Hubble, and EUVE – have been launched since our last meeting five years ago. In addition, SpaceLab experiments flying on the NASA Shuttle have now observed a planetary nebula. After fourteen years, the IUE satellite is still going strong, and IRAS data continue to provide new results on planetaries and their antecedents.
With such a large volume of space data and a broad range in research topics, it is impossible to describe all the results from these instruments. Fortunately, other reviews at this conference by Perinotto (IUE observations of stellar winds) and Zhang (broadband flux distributions) will cover some of these topics. I will limit this review to five topics: (1) the first far-UV spectrum of a planetary, (2) new observations concerning the interaction of a stellar wind and the nebula, (3) the first high-resolution pictures of planetaries made by Hubble, (4) new observational evidence on the masses of planetary nuclei, and (5) recent advances in UV spectroscopy of central stars.