The Shapes of Planetary Nebula Halos

Details The Shapes of Planetary Nebula Halos The Shapes of Planetary Nebula Halos

Jan 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21545423h&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #454.23; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.472

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

1

Scientific paper

A fundamental problem in understanding the shaping of planetary nebulae is the remarkable contrast in morphology between the nebulae and their surrounding halos. The nebulae are typically axi-symmetric and the halos are approximately spherically symmetric. One proposed explanation is that halos, which are formed during the precursor AGB phase, are smoothed out by gas flows when the gas becomes photo-ionized. This smoothing, however, only occurs on long time scales, and fails to account for spherical, neutral halos which are commonly seen around proto-PNe. A more compelling scenario is one in which mass-loss on the AGB is roughly spherical, but becomes axi-symmetric when the nebula is formed, through sudden interaction with a companion star or planet. In this scenario the companion may perturb the shape of the halo during the AGB phase by gravitational focusing, to a degree that depends on its mass and separation. Using a simple prescription, we present an atlas of simulated halo images to illustrate the magnitude of this effect for a range of companion parameters. The results provide the basis for detailed comparison with observations, which can be used to test and refine this scenario.
This work is supported in part by NSF grant AST 08-06910.

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