In this work, we report physical parameters and abundances derived for a sample of 15 high extinction planetary nebulae located in the inner 2° of the Galactic bulge, based on low dispersion spectroscopy secured at the SOAR telescope using the Goodman spectrograph. The new data allow us to extend our database including older, weaker objects that are at the faint end of the planetary nebulae luminosity function. The data provide chemical compositions for PNe located in this region of the bulge to explore the chemical enrichment history of the central region of the Galactic bulge. The results show that the abundances of our sample are skewed to higher metallicities than previous data in the outer regions of the bulge. This can indicate a faster chemical enrichment taking place at the Galactic centre.

Much of the new dust in the local ISM is produced in the last phases of stellar evolution of low- and intermediate-mass stars on the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB). Despite its importance, our knowledge of how dust properties depend on metallicity is limited. Studies of planetary nebulae in irregular galaxies in the Local Group (mostly focused on the LMC and SMC) have revealed a diverse spectral zoo and shown that low metallicity favours carbon-rich dust production by AGB stars. However, at ~1/3 and ~1/5 times the solar metallicity respectively, they provide two snapshots of dust composition at low metallicity, emphasising the need to investigate a region with a range of metallicity values. With its abundance gradient, the Milky Way fits this criterion and provides a good opportunity to observe the dust composition over a large metallicity range. In particular the Galactic anti-center, which is largely unexplored beyond galactocentric distances of 10 kpc, allows us to study the AGB dust a priori assumed to be metal-poor as well as exploring the extent of the Galactic abundance gradient. We analyse a Spitzer spectroscopic sample of 23 planetary nebulae towards the anti-center in order to understand how the metallicity gradient extends beyond 10 kpc from the Galactic center and to observe the dust composition in this region of our Galaxy. We find that the abundance gradients of Ne, S and Ar continue to distances of around 20 kpc (albeit with a large scatter) and the dust emission shows a carbon-rich chemistry similar to that in the Magellanic Clouds.

Atomic data selection is one important source of systematic uncertainty since there are important variations between the values provided by different authors. We explore the effect of using different atomic data in the determination of physical conditions and chemical abundances in a sample of Galactic planetary nebulae and Hii regions. We find that the available datasets introduce significant differences in the results, especially at densities above 104 cm−3, where O/H and N/O reach uncertainties higher than a factor of 4.

We observed the Planetary Nebula NGC 6720 with the Gemini Telescope and the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrographs. We obtained spatial maps of 36 emission-lines in the wavelength range between 3600 Å and 9400 Å. We derived maps of c(Hβ), electronic densities, electronic temperatures, ionic and elemental abundances, and Ionization Correction Factors (ICFs) in the source and investigated the mass-loss history of the progenitor. The elemental abundance results indicate the need for ICFs based on three-dimensional photoionization models.

As one of the follow-up studies of Herschel Planetary Nebula Survey (HerPlaNS; Ueta et al. 2014), we focus on a bipolar planetary nebula (PN) NGC6781 to characterize the dusty nebula and the central star based on our own Herschel data and the rich archival spectroscopic/photometric image data in the wavelengths from UV to far-IR. With CLOUDY, we constructed a comprehensive photoionization model of NGC6781 ever made including data from UV to radio. We succeeded to reproduce the observed spectral energy distribution (SED) and the atomic gas, H2, CO, and OH molecular line fluxes. We found that about 40% of the total dust mass would be from warm-cold dust components.

We explored the photoionisation effects on both the proper motion and emission of planetary nebulae NGC 6302, by means of hydrodynamical simulations. We used the GUACHO code, which includes the photoionisation due to central source (Esquivel et al. 2009, Esquivel & Raga 2013). We model these PNe considering an interacting stellar fast wind with and ejected toroidally shaped slow wind (Uscanga et al. 2014). Synthetic Hα emission maps were obtained from our numerical results in order to do a comparison between the cases with and without photoionisation. Using a wavelets fittering method on our results for the ionisation case, we do not find an increase in the proper motion velocities, however we can see an accelerated expansion in both cases. For the ionisation case the Hα emission presents an increase.

Bulk outflow or global expansion velocities are presented for a large number of planetary nebulae (PNe) that span a wide range of evolutionary stages and different stellar populations. The sample comprises 133 PNe from the Galactic bulge, 100 mature and highly evolved PNe from the disk, 11 PNe from the Galactic halo and 15 PNe with very low central star masses and low metallicities, for a total of 259 PNe. These results reveal from a statistical perspective the kinematic evolution of the expansion velocities of PNe in relation to changing characteristics of the central star’s wind and ionizing luminosity and as a function of the evolutionary rate determined by the central (CS) mass. The large number of PNe utilized in this work for each group of PNe under study and the homogeneity of the data provide for the first time a solid benchmark form observations for model predictions, as has been described by López et al. (2016).

We determined individual distances to a small number of rather round, quite regularly shaped planetary nebulae by combining their angular expansion in the plane of the sky with a spectroscopically measured expansion along the line of sight. For this goal, we combined up to three epochs of Hubble Space Telescope imaging data and determined the respective proper motions of rim and shell edges, and of other features as well. Ground-based radial velocities are assigned separately to the nebular rims and shells and used to determine individual distances, thereby assuming that the expansions in the line-of-sight and in the plane of sky are equal. We employed 1D radiation-hydrodynamics simulations of planetary nebulae evolution to correct for the difference between the spectroscopically measured expansion velocities of rim and shell and the expansion speeds of their respective shock fronts.

In this work, we utilize a method based on Wang-Landau Monte Carlo sampling for studying the temperature effects of astrophysically relavant molecules. Anharmonic effects, e.g., resonances, overtones, and combination bands, are fully incoportated in this method. The calculated infrared (IR) spectra are consistent with the experimental data measured by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

We analysed the Spitzer 8μm and WISE 22μm images of the PN IRAS 18333-2357 using a 3D RT code. We describe its morphology with a H-poor disk and a spherical shell around it.

High-resolution, long-slit spectroscopic observations of two planetary nebulae, M1-32 and M3-15 are presented. The observations were obtained with the 2.1-m telescope at the OAN-SPM, and MES spectrograph. M1-32 shows wide wings on the base of its emission lines and M3-15 has two very faint high-velocity knots. To model both PNe we built a 3D model consisting in a jet interacting with an equatorially concentrated slow wind, emulating the presence of a dense torus, by using the hydrodynamical code Yguazú. The synthetic position-velocity (PV) diagrams obtained from our models reproduce well the observed PV diagrams.

We present studies using different observational techniques, along different frequencies, aiming to resolve and investigate jets, outflows, as well as compact and innermost regions of asymmetric planetary nebulae (PNe) and objects in transition to PN. All the information gathered allow us to explore the kinematics and other important properties of the structures that play a crucial role in the shaping of complex PNe morphologies, in particular, we explore the role of disks/tori as collimating engine of extreme axisymmetric PNe.

To understand mass loss history and mass loss and dust formation history of massive AGB stars, we carried out observations of three bipolar planetary nebulae (BPNe) in 30 micron bands from a ground-based telescope. All of our targets have a compact strong emission source in the mid-infrared (MIR) around the position of the central star of planetary nebula (CSPN). These detected emissions can be originated from cool dust. Our results show that the cool dust component is compactly distributed and much more massive than previous studies indicated. These findings suggest that they experienced a strong mass loss into the equatorial direction in past.

Binary stars can interact via mass transfer when one member (the primary) ascends onto a giant branch. The amount of gas ejected by the binary and the amount of gas accreted by the secondary over the lifetime of the primary influence the subsequent binary phenomenology. Some of the gas ejected by the binary will remain gravitationally bound and its distribution will be closely related to the formation of planetary nebulae. We investigate the nature of mass transfer in binary systems containing an AGB star by adding radiative transfer to the AstroBEAR AMR Hydro/MHD code.

We present the results of our search for low- and intermediate mass evolved stars in the outer Galaxy using AllWISE catalogue photometry. We show that the [3.4]−[12] vs. [4.6]−[22] colour-colour diagram is most suitable for separating C-rich/O-rich AGB and post-AGB star candidates. We are able to select 2,510 AGB and 24,821 post-AGB star candidates. However, the latter are severely mixed with the known young stellar objects in this diagram.

A subset of Post-AGB (PAGB) objects are the highly luminous RV Tauri variables that show similarities to Type-II Cepheids. By using a sample of known RV Tauri stars from the Magellanic Clouds we are able to determine period luminosity relationships (PLRs) in various bands that have been used to determine the luminosities of their Galactic counterparts. We have gathered all available photometry in order to generate an SED for each object and determine the total integrated flux. This total flux combined with a calculated or inferred intrinsic luminosity leads to a distance (Vickers et al. 2015). This distance catalogue has allowed us to begin to constrain the physical parameters of this poorly understood evolutionary phase and to determine links between these physical characteristics as a function of their stellar population.

We have performed 3D hydrodynamic simulations of a symmetrical jet ejection following previous works (Raga et al. 2009, Riera et al. 2014, Velázquez et al. 2014). The jet is emitted from a binary system in elliptical orbit, and its direction changes describing a precession cone. We have considered that the jet has a time-dependence density ejection or a time-dependence velocity ejection, in order to propose an alternative model to explain the morphology of PPNe’s. Also in our description we have included the effect of the photoionization of the central source. From numerical results, synthetic Hα maps were obtained, and a proper motion study were carried out. We found that the photoionization has an important effect on the case with variation density resulting in a increse in the Hα emission.

We proposed to carry out high precision very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations of AR Sco, a pulsing white dwarf (WD) - M dwarf (MD) binary, to provide a direct distance measurement with the e-EVN (European VLBI Network) at 5 GHz. By the proposed parallax measurement on AR Sco, not only the precise distance will be determined, but also some physical parameters, such as the luminosity, the mass and the magnetic field will be significantly tightened accordingly, even the gravitational wave amplitude from this unique binary system can be tightly constrained. In addition, the EVN observations will allow us to answer that whether there is an extended emission structure associated with AR Sco, which will help us to explain the stable continuum radio emission observed during the pulse-off state.

The detection of new binary central stars of planetary nebulae is crucial to definitively determine the importance of binary interactions in the nebular morphology. In this context, we are working on a project that aims to increase the low number of binary central stars detected so far. For that, we are first analyzing public archival data in order to discover potential candidates of binary central stars. These candidates will be subsequently followed-up in order to confirm and characterize them. Here we present our ongoing search and some preliminary results.

V4334 Sgr (a.k.a. Sakurai's object) is the central star of an old planetary nebula that underwent a very late thermal pulse a few years before its discovery in 1996. We have been monitoring the evolution of the optical emission line spectrum since 2001. The goal is to improve the evolutionary models by constraining them with the temporal evolution of the central star temperature. In addition the high resolution spectral observations obtained by X-shooter and ALMA show the temporal evolution of the different morphological components.