An empirically determined relation between the ionized masses of planetary nebulae and a particular function of observational quantities is used to derive distances to 299 primarily nearby planetary nebulae. These distances are used to investigate the scale height of the galactic distribution of planetaries (125 pc), the rate of formation of planetaries (5 + or - 2 x 10 to the -3 PN per cu kpc per yr), and certain aspects of the evolution of the nebulae.
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C. T. Daub (1982) studied this question.