3D Spectroscopy — a powerful new tool for PN research

Historically, technological progress with detectors and instrumentation has been essential for advances in any field of observational astronomy, e.g. the advent of CCDs being crucial for high dynamic range imaging and quantitative spectroscopy of galactic PNe, faint object spectrophotometry for the discovery of extragalactic PNe to distances as far as 100 Mpc, etc. The emerging technique of integral field (“3D”) spectroscopy, which is being applied quite successfully to extragalactic astronomy, has unfortunately hardly been used so far for the study of PNe. However, 3D spectroscopy has an enormous potential for various observational problems, ranging from high spatial resolution emission line mapping in different wavelengths simultaneously, over extremely high sensitivity spectroscopy of low surface brightness objects like e.g. PN haloes, to accurate 3D spectrophotometry of extragalactic PNe, and many others. As an attempt to encourage PN researchers to make better use of these new opportunities, the presently existing suite of 3D instruments on 4–8m class telescopes is reviewed, highlighting some examples of successful 3D observations for the study of PNe.