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Abundances in Local Group Planetary Nebulae
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 March 2016
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We are able to measure the chemical compositions of hundreds of planetary nebulae in our own Galaxy and in the Magellanic Clouds. Why, therefore, do we need to expend the effort to observe much more difficult targets in other Local Group galaxies? A severe lack of distances does not allow us to place Galactic planetary nuclei on the log L-log T plane with any degree of accuracy, so we cannot properly examine composition differences relative to core mass and state of evolution. We can perform such tasks for Magellanic Cloud objects, but do not know how the Clouds’ low-metallicities affect the results, and thus do not know how this sample of planetaries relates to the nebulae in our own system. We know, for example, that in the Clouds, nitrogen enrichment begins above a core mass of about 0.68 M⊙ (Kaler and Jacoby 1990), but other than a clear link between core mass and chemical enrichment in the Galaxy, do not know at what point it becomes important. To study such relationships, we therefore have to go to other galaxies with a variety of initial conditions for which distances are secure, namely those of the Local Group.
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