Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Dec 1994
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994aas...185.5216c&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, 185th AAS Meeting, #52.16; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 26, p.1400
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
3
Scientific paper
Deep [O III] lambda 5007 of planetary nebulae (PN) in the bulge of M31 and in the Magellanic Clouds show that the faint end of the planetary nebulae luminosity function (PNLF) agrees extremely well with simple models based on uniformly expanding nebulae and non-evolving central stars. This behavior allows the total population of PN in a galaxy to be estimated by a simple extrapolation of the observed bright end of the PNLF\null. We use this property to compute the bolometric-luminosity specific PN densities (alpha_ {2.5}) of 25 early-type stellar populations, spanning a wide range in absolute magnitude, color, metallicity, and age. We show that there is a hard upper limit to alpha_ {2.5} which is in perfect agreement with stellar evolution theory, but that the PN population of some galaxies is down by almost an order of magnitude. For bright galaxies, alpha_ {2.5} correlates strongly with galaxy absolute magnitude, with large galaxies being PN deficient. PN density is also inversely correlated with the UV upturn seen in elliptical galaxies (m1550-V), which suggests that the missing PN are becoming AGB manque objects. Significantly, the variations seen in alpha_ {2.5} cannot be due solely to population age: in six galaxies with young or intermediate age stars, alpha_ {2.5} varies by a factor of five. Instead, the evidence suggests that PN density depends on metallicity. This interpretation is supported by the existence of inverse correlation between alpha_ {2.5} and Mg_2 index, the observed direct correlation between alpha_ {2.5} and galactocentric distance in a synthetic galaxy formed from eight normal ellipticals, and the observed direct correlation between alpha_ {2.5} and galactocentric distance in NGC 5128 (Hui \etal 1993). The sensitivity of alpha_ {2.5} to stellar population suggests that by combining PNLF measurements with UV photometry and absorption line analyses, we can break the age-metallicity degeneracy for elliptical galaxies and produce realistic models for the population and chemical evolution of early-type systems.
Ciardullo Robin
Feldmeier John . J.
Jacoby George
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