The mystery planetary nebula-looking object is Abell 76 in Aquarius which has been reclassified as a peculiar ring galaxy (see abstract above) in the 1970s. A link to the best article is attached below where they used spectroscopy to differentiate planetary nebs from galaxies just as is used today to ID new PNs like Patchick 6 or Kronberger 61. Haven’t done much with ring galaxies. That is a whole new genre of objects to violate!
I knew some people would guess that the M31 object is a globular cluster. But globs in M31 at this focal length look fuzzy and not stellar like this object looks in this image. This is M31_V1 which is the first Cepheid variable star identified in M31 by Edwin Hubble. This star helped Hubble establish the distance of M31 and settled the island universe debate in the 1920s. This variable has a periodicity of about 30 days. You can see a YouTube video of the pulsating star M31_V1 made at BYU (YouTube link below).
http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/M31text.html – First paragraph about importance of Cepheids in M31.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cepheid_variable – About Cepheid variables.
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1982ApJ…260..488T – Abell 76 article
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMuaDJQSvdE – YouTube video of M31_V1.