Related papers: Planetary nebulae as probes for galactic chemical …
While there has been significant progress in our understanding of the origin and evolu-tion of planetary nebulae in the last 50 years, there remain several unsolved problems. These include the true 3D morphological structure of the nebulae,…
Planetary nebulae have been used as tracers of light and kinematics for the stellar populations in early-type galaxies since more than twenty years. Several empirical properties have surfaced: for example the invariant bright cut-off of the…
We investigate the variations of the radial O/H abundance gradients from planetary nebulae (PN) located at different distances from the galactic plane. In particular, we determine the abundance gradients at different heights from the plane…
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…
We study the chemical abundances of a wide sample of 142 Galactic planetary nebulae (PNe) with good quality observations, for which the abundances have been derived more or less homogeneously, thus allowing a reasonable comparison with…
We compute the chemical evolution of the Galactic bulge in the context of an inside-out model for the formation of the Milky Way. The model contains updated stellar yields from massive stars. The main purpose of the paper is to compare the…
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…
A proper determination of the abundance gradient in the Milky Way requires the observation of objects at large galactiocentric distances. With this aim, we are exploring the planetary nebula population towards the Galactic Anticentre. In…
Due to its proximity, the stellar populations of the Galactic bulge (GB) can be resolved and can be studied in detail. This allows tracing the bulge metallicity distribution function (MDF) for different spatial regions within the bulge,…
The correlations between planetary nebula (PN) morphology and the nature of their progenitors are explored by examining homogeneous PN samples in the Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds. We selected PNe with reliable abundances from spectral…
Our understanding of planetary nebulae has been significantly enhanced as a result of several recent large surveys (Parker et al., these proceedings). These new discoveries suggest that the `PN phenomenon' is in fact more heterogeneous than…
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…
How galaxies formed and evolved in the expanding Universe is the main science goal of Near-Field Cosmology research. Studies of the properties of galaxies' resolved stars open a widow on their ancient galactic components, probing star…
Close-binary central stars of planetary nebulae offer a unique tool with which to study the critical and yet poorly understood common-envelope phase of binary stellar evolution. Furthermore, as the nebula itself is thought to comprise the…
The temporal behaviour of the radial abundance gradients has important consequences on models for the chemical evolution of the Galaxy. We present a comparison of the time variation of the abundance gradients in the Milky Way disk as…
It is now clear that central star binarity plays a key role in the formation and evolution of planetary nebulae, with a significant fraction playing host to close-binary central stars which have survived one or more common envelope…
Planetary nebulae (PNe) are circumstellar gas ejected during an intense mass-losing phase in the the lives of asymptotic giant branch stars. PNe have a stunning variety of shapes, most of which are not spherically symmetric. The debate over…
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\%…
We study the evolution of nitrogen in the Galactic halo, thick disc, thin disc and bulge by comparing detailed chemical evolution models with recent observations. The models used in this work have already been constrained to explain the…
Photoionized nebulae, comprising HII regions and planetary nebulae, are excellent laboratories to investigate the nucleosynthesis and chemical evolution of several elements in the Galaxy and other galaxies of the Local Group. Our purpose in…