Planetary Nebulae as Narrators of Stellar and Galactic Chemical Evolution: A New Probe of Galactochronology

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

ABSTRACTAST-9819123Kwitter, KarenThis project focuses on the spectroscopic determination of chemical abundances for planetary nebulae (PNe) as tracers of the chemical evolution of the Galaxy and yields of stellar nucleosynthesis. The objectives of the study include: (1) deriving the radial gradients of sulfur (S) and argon (Ar) across the disk of the Galaxy; (2) investigating the hypothesis that S and Ar can be used as tracers of Fe in stellar metallicity studies; (3) determination of the metallicity of the central star of PNe; (4) using the metallicities implied to test theoretical yields of nuclear processing in intermediate-mass stars; and (5) testing the reported abundance gradients within individual PNe. Some of the data for this study has already been collected. New high-resolution spectroscopic data will be obtained at the Apache Point Observatory and elsewhere, as required.