The populations of planetary nebulae in the direction of the Galactic bulge.
Chemical abundances and Wolf-Rayet central stars.
Gorny S.K., Stasinska G., Escudero A.V. & Costa R.D.D.
2004, A&A 427, 231
Abstract:
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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 bulge and those most likely to belong to the Galactic disk. We
have determined the chemical composition of all the 164 objects in a
coherent way. We looked for stellar emission features and discovered 14 new
[WR] stars and 15 new weak emission line central stars. The analyzed data
led us to the following conclusions: (1) the spectral type distribution of
[WR] stars is very different in the bulge and in the disk of the Galaxy.
However, the observed distributions are strongly dependent on selection
effects. (2) The proportion of [WR] PNe is significantly larger in the bulge
than in the disk. (3) The oxygen abundances in [WR] stars do no appear to be
significantly affected by nucleosynthesis and mixing in the progenitors. (4)
The O/H gradient of the Galactic disk PNe population flattens in the most
internal parts of the Galaxy. (5) The median oxygen abundance in the bulge
PN population is larger by 0.2 dex than in the disk population seen in the
direction of the bulge. (6) Bulge PNe with smaller O/H tend to have smaller
radial velocities. (7) The oxygen abundance distribution of bulge PNe is
similar in shape to that of the metallicity distribution of bulge giants,
but significantly narrower. (8) The location of SB 32 (PN G 349.7-09.1) in
the (V_lsr, l_II) diagram and its low oxygen abundance argues that it
probably belongs to the halo population.
Based on observations made at the South African Astronomical Observatory.
A pdf version of the paper
gsec04.pdf .
is accessible via anonymous ftp together with data of
Table1 ,
Table2 and
Table3 .
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