CARBON ABUNDANCE IN SMALL MAGELLANIC CLOUD PLANETARY NEBULAE THROUGH ADVANCED CAMERA FOR SURVEYS PRISM SPECTROSCOPY: CONSTRAINING STELLAR EVOLUTION AT LOW METALLICITY

Journal Article · Tue Sep 01 04:00:00 EDT 2009 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/702/1/733; COUNTRY OF INPUT: INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY (IAEA)· OSTI ID:21333799

Stanghellini, Letizia; Shaw, Richard A ^[1]; Lee, T -H ^[2]; Balick, Bruce ^[3]; Villaver, Eva ^[4]

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1. National Optical Astronomy Observatory, 950 N. Cherry Av., Tucson, AZ 85719 (United States)
2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Western Kentucky University, 1906 College Heights Blvd 11077, Bowling Green, KY 42101 (United States)
3. Astronomy Department, Box 351580, University of Washington, Seattle WA 98195 (United States)
4. Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Departamento de FIsica Teorica C-XI, 28049 Madrid (Spain)

We perform near ultraviolet ACS prism spectroscopy of 11 Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) planetary nebulae (PNe) with the main aim of deriving the abundance of carbon. The analysis of the ACS spectra provides reliable atomic carbon abundances for all but a couple of our targets; ionic C{sup 2+} abundances are calculated for all target PNe. With the present paper we more than double the number of SMC PNe with known carbon abundances, providing a good database to study the elemental evolution in low- and intermediate-mass stars at low metallicity. We study carbon abundances of Magellanic Cloud PNe in the framework of stellar evolution models and the elemental yields. Constraining SMC and LMC stellar evolutionary models is now possible with the present data, through the comparison of the final yields calculated and the CNO abundances observed. We found that SMC PNe are almost exclusively carbon rich, and that for the most part they have not undergone the hot bottom burning phase, contrary to about half of the studied LMC PNe. The yields from stellar evolutionary models with LMC and SMC metallicities broadly agree with the observations. In particular, evolutionary yields for M {sub to} < 3.5 M {sub sun} well encompass the abundances of round and elliptical PNe in the SMC. We found that the carbon emission lines are major coolants for SMC PNe, more so than in their LMC counterparts, indicating that metallicity has an effect on the physics of PNe, as predicted by Stanghellini et al.

• OSTI ID: 21333799
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 702; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ABUNDANCE
CAMERAS
CARBON
CARBON IONS
MAGELLANIC CLOUDS
MASS
PLANETARY NEBULAE
SPECTRA
SPECTROSCOPY
STAR EVOLUTION
STARS
ULTRAVIOLET RADIATION