Related papers: The structure of Planetary Nebulae: theory vs. pra…
The extended nebulae formed as pulsar winds expand into their surroundings provide information about the composition of the winds, the injection history from the host pulsar, and the material into which the nebulae are expanding.…
We present the results of a near-infrared narrowband imaging survey of planetary nebulae. Objects were selected in a way that complements similar surveys done at visible and near-infrared wavelengths. No new detections of molecular hydrogen…
It is now clear that a binary formation pathway is responsible for a significant fraction of planetary nebulae, and this increased sample of known binaries means that we are now in a position to begin to constrain their influence on the…
The theory of the interaction of planetary nebulae with the interstellar medium is important for the interpretation of nebular morphologies that deviate from point symmetry. It can be used to probe the interstellar medium and its magnetic…
Planetary Nebulae (PNe) are very important kinematical tracers of the outer regions of early-type galaxies, where the integrated light techniques fail. Under ad hoc assumptions, they allow measurements of rotation velocity and velocity…
Recent observations have revealed the presence of a variety of small-scale ``micro-structures'' in Planetary Nebulae images. I discuss numerical hydrodynamics models of planetaries and outline the formation and growth of instabilities that…
The last 20 years have seen an explosion in our understanding of the large-scale distribution and motions of galaxies in the nearby universe. The field has moved from a largely qualitative, morphological description of the structures seen…
Galaxies are faint enough when one observes just their light distributions, but in studying their full dynamical structure the stars are spread over the six dimensions of phase space rather than just the three spatial dimensions, making…
Planetary nebula are useful kinematic tracers of the stars in all galaxy types. I review recent observationally-driven developments in the study of galaxy mass profiles. These have yielded surprising results on spiral galaxy disk masses and…
Studies of the relationship between planetary nebula morphology and the evolution of the central stars has long suffered from uncertainties in distance determinations, and from the bias of interstellar absorption, that are typical for…
A historical review of our understanding of bulges is first presented, highlighting similarities and differences between bulges and ellipticals. Then, some topics of current interest are reviewed, bypassing stellar population questions and…
Galaxies represent the visible fabric of the Universe and there has been considerable progress recently in both observational and theoretical studies. The underlying goal is to understand the present-day diversity of galaxy forms, masses…
We present a powerful new tool to analyse and disentangle the 3-D geometry and kinematic structure of gaseous nebulae. The method consists in combining commercially available digital animation software to simulate the 3-D structure and…
We analyse a large sample of galactic planetary nebulae based on their chemical composition and morphology. A recent morphological classification system is adopted, and several elements are considered, namely He, N, O, S, Ar, Ne, and C in…
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…
Planetary nebulae are traditionally considered to represent the final evolutionary stage of all intermediate-mass stars ($\sim$0.7-8Msol). Recent evidence seems to contradict this picture. In particular, since the launch of the Hubble Space…
Aims. Numerous planetary nebulae show complicated inner structures not obviously explained. For one such object we undertake a detailed 3D photoionization and kinematical model analysis for a better understanding of the underlying shaping…
The Planetary Nebula Spectrograph is a dedicated instrument for measuring radial velocity of individual Planetary Nebulae (PNe) in galaxies. This new instrument is providing crucial data with which to probe the structure of dark halos in…
The transition from Asymptotic Giant Branch star to Planetary Nebula is short-lived and mysterious. Though it lasts only a few thousand years, it is thought to be the time when the asymmetries observed in subsequent phases arise. During…
Planetary Nebulae represent a powerful window into the evolution of low-intermediate mass stars that have undergone extensive mass-loss. The nebula manifests itself in an extremely wide variety of shapes, but exactly how the mass lost is…