Related papers: Challenges faced by current Galactic planetary neb…
High quality spectrophotometric observations of 30 Planetary Nebulae in the Galactic Bulge have been made. Accurate reddenings, plasma parameters, and abundances of He,O,N,S,Ar,Cl are derived. We find the abundances of O,S,Ar in the…
An increasing number of photometric observations of multiple stellar populations in Galactic globular clusters is seriously challenging the paradigm of GCs hosting single, simple stellar populations. These multiple populations manifest…
We present a summary of current research on planetary nebulae and their central stars, and related subjects such as atomic processes in ionized nebulae, AGB and post-AGB evolution. Future advances are discussed that will be essential to…
Planetary nebulae (PNe) and their central stars (CSs) are ideal tools to test evolutionary theory: photospheric properties of their exciting stars give stringent constraints for theoretical predictions of stellar evolution. The nebular…
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) contains the nearest large extragalactic population of planetary nebulae (PNe). A shallow viewing angle and low interstellar reddening towards the LMC potentially means a larger, more complete flux-limited…
The Local Group contains a great number of dwarf irregulars and spheroidals, for which the spectroscopy of individual stars can be obtained. Thus, the chemical evolution of these galaxies can be traced, with the only need of finding…
Our understanding of the neutron star population is informed to a great degree by large-scale surveys that have been carried out by radio facilities during the past fifty years. We summarize some of the recent breakthroughs in our…
We report observations of a remarkable major axes alignment nearly parallel to the Galactic plane of 5{\sigma} significance for a subset of bulge "planetary nebulae" (PNe) that host, or are inferred to host, short period binaries. Nearly…
The majority of pulsar population synthesis studies performed to date have focused on isolated pulsar evolution. Those that have incorporated pulsar evolution within binary systems have tended to either treat binary evolution poorly of…
I report on some recent results in the framework of a complex project aimed to characterize the photometric properties of stellar populations in Galactic Globular Clusters.
Extragalactic surveys in the emission line of [O III] 5007 have provided us with the absolute line strengths of large, homogeneous sets of planetary nebulae. These data have been used to address a host of problems, from the measurement of…
We present a spectroscopic investigation of 25 objects previously reported as possible Planetary Nebulae (PNe) in recent catalogs to obtain their physical properties and to establish their true nature. We found 11 objects showing intense…
Compact object binaries (a black hole or a neutron star orbiting a non-degenerate stellar companion) are key to our understanding of late massive star evolution, in addition to being some of the best probes of extreme gravity and accretion…
The ESA Gaia mission has revolutionized our understanding of the white dwarf population, delivering an unprecedented census of these nearby remnants and revealing previously unseen structures in the Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram.…
The population of the Galactic X-ray binaries has been mostly probed with moderately sensitive hard X-ray surveys so far. The eRosita mission will provide, for the first time a sensitive all-sky X-ray survey in the 2-10 keV energy range,…
We compare the populations of Red Giant stars and Planetary Nebulae in the Galactic Bulge, in the light of recent determinations of their abundances patterns. We find both populations to be compatible. From the planetary nebulae, we find…
Surveys of pulsating stars in the inner Galaxy have been very limited, but recent large-scale surveys are rapidly bringing us new samples of various kinds of variable stars and new insights into stellar populations therein. Because of the…
We review the evolution of our understanding of the planetary nebulae phenomenon and their place in the scheme of stellar evolution. The historical steps leading to our current understanding of central star evolution and nebular formation…
Stellar populations, building blocks of galaxies, are direct tracers of the star formation history, the chemical enrichment and the assembly of galaxies in the Universe. They therfore allow us to understand how galaxies formed and evolved.…
We analyze the spatial orientation of a homogenous sample of 440 elongated Planetary Nebulae (PNe) in order to determine the orientation of their apparent major axis respect to the Milky Way plane. We present some important geometrical and…