Related papers: Evolution from AGB to planetary nebula in the MSX …

Post-asymptotic giant branch (post-AGB) stars with discs are all binaries. Many of these binaries have orbital periods between 100 and 1000 days so cannot have avoided mass transfer between the AGB star and its companion, likely through a…

We present asymptotic giant branch (AGB) models of metallicity $Z=10^{-4}$ and $Z=3\times 10^{-4}$, with the aim of understanding how the gas enrichment and the dust production change in very metal-poor environments and to assess the…

The origin of the so called 'detached shells' around AGB stars is not fully understood, but two common hypotheses state that these shells form either through the interaction of distinct wind phases or an eruptive mass loss associated with a…

Based on evolutionary spectral synthesis models explicitly including the spectra of variable AGB stars, we select near-IR features that dentify the strong O-rich or C-rich AGB contributions to the near-IR light of post-starburst…

The detected variety in chemistry and circumstellar shell morphology of the limited sample of Galactic post-AGB stars is so large that there is no consensus yet on how the different objects are linked by evolutionary channels. The…

A project which aims to understand the abundance patterns of He, C, N, O, Ne, S, and Ar for a small sample of planetary nebulae is described. Abundance ratios of O/H, C/O, and N/O especially show a broad range relative to their solar…

This contribution reviews recent observational results concerning astronomical masers toward post-AGB objects with a special attention to water fountain sources and the prototypical source OH231.8+4.2. These sources represent a short…

We investigate the effects of molecular opacities on the evolution of TP-AGB stars that experience the third dredge-up, i.e. with surface abundances of carbon and oxygen varying with time. To this aim, a routine is constructed to derive the…

I study some effects of aspherical mass loss during the last stages of the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) on the appearance of proto planetary nebulae (PNs) and young PNs. The aspherical mass loss can be small scale inhomogeneities, and/or…

Post-AGB stars are the final stage of evolution of low-intermediate mass stars (M<8 Solar Masses). Those in binary systems have stable circumbinary discs. Using data from Herschel (PACS/SPIRE), we extend the SEDs of 50 galactic post-AGB…

Planetary nebulae (PN) represent the evolutionary fate of the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stellar envelopes, thus are ideally suited to study the chemical impact of AGB stars. Stellar evolution predict elemental enrichment through the AGB…

The recent progress in high-spatial-resolution techniques, spanning wavelengths from the visual to the radio regime, is leading to new valuable insights into the complex dynamical atmospheres of Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars and their…

We review the information that planetary nebulae and their immediate progenitors, the post-AGB objects, can provide to probe the nucleosynthesis and mixing in low and intermediate mass stars. We emphasize new approaches based on high…

We present 2 to 2.4 micron integral field spectroscopy of a sample of hot post-AGB stars with early-B spectral types, using the NIFS instrument on Gemini North. These stars are just beginning to ionize their immediate environments and turn…

In the course of a systematic exploration of the uncertainties associated to the input micro- and macro-physics in the modeling of the evolution of intermediate mass stars during their Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) phase, we focus on the…

There is a class of binary post-asymptotic giant branch (post-AGB) stars that exhibit remarkable near-infrared (NIR) excess. These stars are surrounded by disks with Keplerian or quasi-Keplerian dynamics and outflows composed of gas…

To measure the mass loss from dusty oxygen-rich (O-rich) evolved stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), we have constructed a grid of models of spherically-symmetric dust shells around stars with constant mass-loss rates using 2Dust.…

We present a new model atmosphere analysis of nine central stars of planetary nebulae. This study is based on a new generation of realistic stellar model atmospheres for hot stars; state-of-the-art, hydrodynamically consistent, spherically…

Bipolar or multipolar lobes in pre-planetary nebulae (pPNe) often exhibit intertwined outer whorled patterns, resulting from stellar wind matter accumulation during the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) phase. These structures are likely…

Proto-planetary nebulae (pPN) and planetary nebulae (PN) seem to be formed by interacting winds from asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars. The observational issue that most pPN are bipolar but most older PN are elliptical is addressed. We…