How many planetary nebulae are believed to exist in the Milky Way Galaxy?

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Planetary nebula Southern Ring Nebula as captured by the James Webb Space Telescope in the near-infrared (left) and the mid-infrared (right). The dimmer star at the center of this scene has been sending out rings of gas and dust for thousands of years in all directions. The Southern Ring Nebula is approximately 2,500 light-years away.

It is estimated that there are approximately 20,000 planetary nebulae within the Milky Way Galaxy.

While this is the estimated total, only about 3,500 of these objects have been cataloged to date. The difficulty in identifying the full population is largely due to the obscuration caused by dust within the Galaxy, which can hide these objects from observation.12