There are thousands of planetary nebulae in our galaxy and they provide targets for professional and amateur astronomers alike, with the latter often taking spectacular images of these beautiful jewels. But despite intense study, scientists have struggled to measure one of their key properties -- their distance. Now, a new way of estimating more accurate distances to the planetary nebulae dispersed across our galaxy has been announced by a team of three astronomers at the University of Hong Kong. The new approach, which is both simple and elegant, allows astronomers to measure distances up to 5 times more accurately than previous methods.