1998A&A...332..300K

The Deep Near Infrared Southern Sky Survey (DENIS) is the first attempt to survey the entire southern sky in the near infrared (NIR) range in three bands (I, J and K_s; Epchtein et al. 1997Msngr..87...27E). A lot of studies have been done on planetary nebulae (PNe) in the NIR throughout the last decades. These investigations often use J, H and K bands. Thus the DENIS survey will lead, due to different bands and to the total sky coverage, to a new view on PNe in this wavelength domain. We demonstrate here the capabilities for the imaging of planetary nebulae with DENIS on basis of nebulae observed during the first phase of the survey. We also compare the results for NGC 2440 with deep high-resolution images obtained at the 100-inch Las Campanas duPont telescope. The DENIS data, being comparable to ISOCAM in spatial resolution (Cesarsky et al. 1996A&A...315L..32C), will also support investigation done at longer wavelengths by means of ISO (Kimeswenger et al. 1997a, MNRAS, in press). We also assess the quality of photometry obtained with DENIS by comparison with literature results. In regions with high background stellar confusion we are able to improve on the photometry significantly in accuracy and reliability.