PROJECT SUMMARY
Planetary Nebulae (PN) are luminous emission line objects which are
abundantly found with beautiful appearance throughout the Milky Way.
In other galaxies, at distances beyond the LMC/SMC, extragalactic
Planetary Nebulae (XPN) appear as point-like objects, which are relatively
easy to detect with narrow-band imaging techniques. They have been
found in large numbers out to the distance of galaxies in the Virgo
Cluster, and also in the intracluster space of Virgo. Recently,
intracluster XPN were even discovered as far away as in the Coma
Cluster. Because of their bright emission lines, XPN are visible
with good contrast with respect to the continuum light of the underlying
population of unresolved stars in a galaxy, which is why they have become
increasingly interesting as individually resolved tracers for low to
intermediate mass (i.e. old) stellar populations - which otherwise
can be studied only in the integrated light of very many unresolved
individual stars.
The XPN Physics project attempts to verify, whether - and if yes: to which
extent -, XPN are good probes for measuring chemical abundances from their parent stellar population.
THE TEAM
Prof. Dr. Detlef Schönberner
Dr. Matthias Steffen
Dr. Martin M. Roth
Dr. Christer Sandin
Dr. Ana Monreal Ibero (previous member)
Dr. Andreas Kelz
ACCESS TO OBSERVING FACILITIES
[ESO-VLT Paranal]
[ESO La Silla]
[PMAS Calar Alto]
Other observatories are accessible through collaborators.
[XPN problems]
[XPN work plan]
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