Related papers: C/O Abundance Ratios and Dust Features in Galactic…
The Cepheid period-luminosity (PL) relation is unquestionably one of the most powerful tools at our disposal for determining the extragalactic distance scale. While significant progress has been made in the past few years towards its…
We have observed 44 planetary nebulae (PNe) in the direction of the Galactic bulge, and merged our data with published ones. We have distinguished, in the merged sample of 164 PNe, those PNe most likely to prtain physically to the Galactic…
Carbon and oxygen are key tracers of the Galactic chemical evolution; in particular, a reported upturn in [C/O] towards decreasing [O/H] in metal-poor halo stars could be a signature of nucleosynthesis by massive Population III stars. We…
Radial O/H abundance gradients derived from HII regions, hot stars and planetary nebulae are combined with [Fe/H] gradients from open cluster stars in order to derive an independent [O/Fe] x [Fe/H] relation for the galactic disk. A…
We present MUSE deep integral-field unit spectroscopy of three planetary nebulae(PNe) with high abundance discrepancy factors (ADF > 20): NGC 6778, M 1-42 and Hf 2-2. We have constructed flux maps for more than 40 emission lines, and use…
The recent introduction of high resolution/large spectral range spectrographs provided the opportunity to investigate in detail the chemical composition of classical Cepheids. This paper is focussed on new abundance determinations for iron…
In this review we present a brief discussion on the observational evidence in favor of the presence of temperature variations, and conclude that many planetary nebulae show spatial temperature variations that are larger than those predicted…
Planetary nebulae (PNe) in the Magellanic Clouds (LMC, SMC) offer a unique opportunity to study both the population and evolution of low- and intermediate-mass stars in an environment which is free of the distance scale bias that hinder…
We present atmospheric parameters and iron abundances derived from high-resolution spectra for three samples of dwarf stars: stars which are known to host close-in giant planets (CGP), stars for which radial velocity data exclude the…
[ABRIDGED]We study the carbon abundances with a twofold objective. On the one hand, we want to evaluate the behaviour of carbon in the context of Galactic chemical evolution. On the other hand, we focus on the possible dependence of carbon…
The iron depletion level and the gas-phase iron abundance in the hot ~10^6 K interstellar medium (ISM) is critical to the understanding of its energy balance as well as the thermal sputtering, cooling, and heating processes of dust grains.…
Sulfur abundances derived from optical emission line measurements and ionization correction factors in planetary nebulae are systematically lower than expected for the objects' metallicities. We have carefully considered a large range of…
We have observed several cloud cores in the Orion B (L1630) molecular cloud in the 2-1 transitions of C18O, C17O and 13C18O. We use these data to show that a model where the cores consist of very optically thick C18O clumps cannot explain…
We study infrared emission of 17 isolated, diffuse clouds with masses of order solar masses, to test the hypothesis that grain property variations cause the apparently low gas-to-dust ratios that have been measured in those clouds. Maps of…
We present a method to determine nitrogen abundance ratios with respect to iron ([N/Fe]) from molecular CN-band features observed in low-resolution ($R \sim$ 2000) stellar spectra obtained by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the…
While the chemical abudances observed in bright planetary nebulae in local spiral galaxies are less varied than their counterparts in dwarfs, they provide new insight. Their helium abundances are typically enriched by less than 50\%…
Surface abundances of C, N, and O in red giants are affected by processed material mixed into the stars' convective envelopes. Using a sample of $\sim 5100$ stars with elemental abundances from APOGEE and asteroseismic masses from {\it…
In this work, a review is given of some recent results and problems involved in the determination of chemical abundances of galactic planetary nebulae, particularly regarding disk and bulge objects.
We have determined fluorine abundances from the F II 4789 and F IV 4060 nebular emission lines for a sample of planetary nebulae (PNe). Our results show that fluorine is generally overabundant in PNe, thus providing new evidence for the…
Context: In recent years mid- and far infrared spectra of planetary nebulae have been analysed and lead to more accurate abundances. It may be expected that these better abundances lead to a better understanding of the evolution of these…