Discovery of optical candidate supernova remnants in Sagittarius
  During an [O III] survey for planetary nebulae, we identified a region in
Sagittarius containing several candidate Supernova Remnants and obtained deep
optical narrow-band images and spectra to explore their nature. The images of
the unstudied area have been obtained in the light of Halpha+[N II], [S II] and
[O III]. The resulting mosaic covers an area of 1.4x1.0 deg^2 where filamentary
and diffuse emission was discovered, suggesting the existence of more than one
supernova remnants (SNRs) in the area. Deep long slit spectra were also taken
of eight different regions. Both the flux calibrated images and the spectra
show that the emission from the filamentary structures originates from
shock-heated gas, while the photo-ionization mechanism is responsible for the
diffuse emission. Part of the optical emission is found to be correlated with
the radio at 4850 MHz suggesting their association, while the WISE infrared
emission found in the area at 12 and 22 micron marginally correlates with the
optical. The presence of the [O III] emission line in one of the candidate SNRs
suggests shock velocities into the interstellar "clouds" between 120 and 200
km/s, while the absence in the other indicates slower shock velocities. For all
candidate remnants the [S II] 6716/6731 ratio indicates electron densities
below 240 cm^{-3}, while the Halpha emission has been measured to be between
0.6 to 41x10^{-17} erg/s/cm^2/arcsec^2. The existence of eight pulsars within
1.5deg away from the center of the candidate SNRs also supports the scenario of
many SNRs in the area as well as that the detected optical emission could be
part of a number of supernovae explosions.
