Four new planetary nebulae towards the Small Magellanic Cloud

We present four newplanetary nebulae (PNe) discovered in the SmallMagellanicCloud (SMC) from deep UK Schmidt telescope narrow-band H a and broad-band short-red 'SR' continuum images and confirmed spectroscopically. All new PNe show strong [N _II]/H α ratios in their spectra. We describe and detail the process of PN candidate selection based on wide-field multiwavelength imaging of the SMC and our subsequent spectroscopic confirmation and classification.We carefully reviewed archived information and available imagery for previous SMC PN detections and various other types of emission objects in the SMC as a training set to help identify new PN candidates. These four preliminary discoveries provide a 4 per cent increase to the previously known SMC PN population of ~100. Once spectroscopic follow-up of all our newly identified SMC PN candidates is complete, we expect to increase the total number of known SMC PNe by up to 50 per cent. This will permit a significant improvement to determination of the SMC PN luminosity function and enable further insights into the chemical evolution and kinematics of the SMC PN population.