Planetary Nebulae, Blue Stragglers and Binary Mergers

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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Scientific paper

The plot has thickened over the origin of planetary nebulae (PN) and the role played by binary interactions. One of the outstanding questions is why the brightest PN in every galaxy is limited to the same maximum brightness (making the ensemble of PN a standard candle): in older galaxies PN should be less luminous than in younger galaxies because their central stars have lower mass and luminosity. It has been proposed that the bright end of the PN luminosity function is populated by PN descending from blue stragglers, stars that have a binary or even merger origin, making over-massive and over-luminous PN in old populations. Without blue stragglers, PN should be absent in the oldest populations such as globular clusters. There are, however, 4 PN known in the Galactic globular cluster system. We present here HST observations of two of them, JaFu1 (in Pal 6) and IRAS18333-2357 (in M22) that reveal characteristics (e.g., central star mass, nebular morphology) that support the binary origin hypothesis.

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