Jets (fast collimated outflows) are claimed to be the main shaping agent of the most asymmetric planetary nebulae (PNs), as they impinge on the circumstellar material at late stages of the asymptotic giant branch phase. The first jet detected in a PN was that of NGC 2392, yet there is no available image because of its low surface brightness contrast with the bright nebular emission. Here we take advantage of the tomographic capabilities of Gran Telescopio de Canarias Multi-Espectrógrafo en GTC de Alta Resolución para Astronomía high-dispersion integral field spectroscopic observations of the jet in NGC 2392 to gain unprecedented details of its morphology and kinematics. The jet of NGC 2392 is found to emanate from the central star, break through the walls of the inner shell of this iconic PN and extend outside the nebula’s outermost regions with an S-shaped morphology suggestive of precession. At odds with the fossil jets found in mature PNs, the jet in NGC 2392 is currently being collimated and launched. The high nebular excitation of NGC 2392, which implies an He⁺⁺/He ionization fraction too high to be attributed to the known effective temperature of the star, has been proposed in the past to hint at the presence of a hot white dwarf companion. In conjunction with the hard X-ray emission from the central star, the present-day jet collimation would support the presence of such a double-degenerate system where one component undergoes accretion from a remnant circumbinary disk of the common envelope phase.

Evolved stars such as asymptotic giant branch stars (AGB), post-AGB stars, proto-planetary nebulae (proto-PNe), and planetary nebulae (PNe) show rings and arcs around them and their nebular shells. We have searched for these morphological features in optical Hubble Space Telescope and mid-infrared Spitzer Space Telescope images of ∼650 proto-PNe and PNe and discovered them in 29 new sources. Adding those to previous detections, we derive a frequency of occurrence ≃8 per cent. All images have been processed to remove the underlying envelope emission and enhance outer faint structures to investigate the spacing between rings and arcs and their number. The averaged time lapse between consecutive rings and arcs is estimated to be in the range 500–1200 yr. The spacing between them is found to be basically constant for each source, suggesting that the mechanism responsible for the formation of these structures in the final stages of evolved stars is stable during time periods of the order of the total duration of the ejection. In our sample, this period of time spans ≤4500 yr.

Nova shells can provide important information on their distance, their interactions with circumstellar and interstellar media, and the evolution in morphology of the ejecta. We have obtained narrowband images of a sample of five nova shells, namely DQ Her, FH Ser, T Aur, V476 Cyg, and V533 Her, with ages ranging from 50 to 130 yr. These images have been compared with suitable available archival images to derive their angular expansion rates. We find that all the nova shells in our sample are still in the free expansion phase, which can be expected, as the mass of the ejecta is 7–45 times larger than the mass of the swept-up circumstellar medium. The nova shells will keep expanding freely for time periods up to a few hundred years, reducing their time dispersal into the interstellar medium.