Kinematic Evidence for Different Planetary Nebulae Populations in the Elliptical Galaxy NGC 4697

We show that a complete sample of Planetary Nebulae (PNe) in NGC 4697 constitutes more than one populations whose distributions in magnitudes, kinematics and positions are significantly different. The Planetary Nebula Luminosity Functions (PNLFs) of kinematically selected PN subsamples differ with 99.7% confidence, ruling out a universal PNLF. These sub‐populations introduce an uncertainty in the bright cutoff magnitude of ∼ 0.15 mag for this galaxy. Our analysis suggests that though the use of PNe for extragalactic distance determinations is not necessarily compromised, but their use as dynamical tracers of dark halos will require deep observations and careful analysis of large PN samples.