Characterizing global expansion evolution of the ionized matter in planetary nebulae

Abstract

AbstractBulk outflow or global expansion velocities are presented for a large number of planetary nebulae (PNe) that span a wide range of evolutionary stages and different stellar populations. The sample comprises 133 PNe from the Galactic bulge, 100 mature and highly evolved PNe from the disk, 11 PNe from the Galactic halo and 15 PNe with very low central star masses and low metallicities, for a total of 259 PNe. These results reveal from a statistical perspective the kinematic evolution of the expansion velocities of PNe in relation to changing characteristics of the central star’s wind and ionizing luminosity and as a function of the evolutionary rate determined by the central (CS) mass. The large number of PNe utilized in this work for each group of PNe under study and the homogeneity of the data provide for the first time a solid benchmark form observations for model predictions, as has been described by López et al. (2016).