Related papers: Planetary nebulae as probes for galactic chemical …
The recent HST optical images, and the optical and ultraviolet spectra, of Magellanic planetary nebulae (PNe), together with the large data-base that has been collected in the past decade, allows unprecedented insight in the evolution of…
Radial abundance gradients are observed in the Galaxy and other galaxies as well, and include several chemical elements in different stellar systems. Possibly the most accurate gradients in the Galaxy are those determined from chepheid…
An analysis is made of the abundances of planetary nebulae (PN) in the Galaxy (MW), the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The data has been gathered by the IAG/USP group in a homogeneous procedure, involving…
A few results that indicate the presence of temperature variations in gaseous nebulae are reviewed. The evidence is based on: a) temperatures derived from different methods, and b) on comparisons of abundances predicted by models of…
Planetary nebulae are formed by the matter ejected by low-to-intermediate mass stars (~0.8-8 times the mass of the Sun) towards the end of their lives. As hydrogen and then helium fuel sources run out, stars expand. During these giant…
Recent applications of PN to the study of galactic chemical evolution are reviewed, such as PN and stellar populations, abundance gradients, including their space and time variations, determination of the He/H radial gradient and of the…
We investigate Galactic bulge planetary nebulae without emission-line central stars for which peculiar infrared spectra have been obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope, including the simultaneous signs of oxygen and carbon based dust.…
Ionized nebulae are key to understanding the chemical composition and evolution of the Universe. Among these nebulae, H~{\sc ii} regions and planetary nebulae are particularly important as they provide insights into the present and past…
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…
By means of hydrodynamical models we do the first investigations of how the properties of planetary nebulae are affected by their metal content and what can be learned from spatially unresolved spectrograms of planetary nebulae in distant…
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…
Planetary nebulae (PNe) exist in a range of different morphologies, from very simple and symmetric round shells, to elliptical, bipolar, and even quadrupolar shapes. They present extremely complex ensembles of filaments, knots, ansae, and…
In this review I outline some ideas in chemical evolution, necessary for understanding the evolution of galaxies from measured elemental abundance ratios. I then discuss abundance results from studies of Local Group dwarf galaxies and the…
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…
This paper is the fourth and final report on a project designed to study carbon abundances in a sample of planetary nebulae representing a broad range in progenitor mass and metallicity. We present newly acquired optical spectrophotometric…
Planetary Nebulae (PNs) in the Magellanic Clouds are studied to understand stellar populations and evolution of low- and intermediate-mass stars in different chemical environments. Using HST observations from our LMC and SMC PN…
It is widely believed that central star binarity plays an important role in the formation and evolution of aspherical planetary nebulae, however observational support for this hypothesis is lacking. Here, we present the most recent results…
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 evolution of the content of heavy elements in galaxies, the relative chemical abundances, their spatial distribution, and how these scale with various galactic properties, provide unique information on the galactic evolutionary…
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…