The chemical composition of 218 galactic planatary nebulae is investigated, all the nebulae are divided into four classes according to the masses of the nebulae and progenitor stars. The values of local abundances, galactic abundances and electron temperature gradients are found for each class of nebulae. The correlations between element abundances are also investigated. The results are compared with theorical predictions.

The O, S, Ar abundances for a sample of 122 planetary nebulae (merging LNA data and those by Köppen, Acker and Stenholm 1991) were analysed. Average abundances were calculated for progenitors having different metallicities (ages). Our study suggests that type I planetaries, whose progenitors are not older than 1–2 Gyr, have average oxygen abundances 0.2 dex lower than the solar value. This agrees with O-abundance determinations in HII regions, intermediate mass supergiants and B stars in young associations. S and Ar show a different behaviour. We suggest that such a paucity of O in the ISM is produced by recent infalling gas from the halo, having abundance ratios similar to those expected from type Ia supernovae.

The presence of radial abundance gradients is now well established, both in our Galaxy and in other spirals. These gradients were originally derived from oxygen abundance in HII regions, but in the past few years, other elements produced by massive stars have also been shown to display radial abundance gradients similar to the oxygen gradient, which amounts to −0.07 dex kpc−1. Moreover, planetary nebulae (PN), belonging to the intermediate disk population (the so–called Peimbert “type II” PN) also exhibit gradients of the same order of magnitude as the HII regions.

Abundances of O, N, He, S, Ar have been derived from the observations of PN at various heights above the plane with the plasma diagnosis code HOPPLA (Köppen et al. 1991). A gradient in O and N appears in the first 1000 pc. No correlation is found above.

A new method of the determination of planetary nebulae abundances is proposed. Unobserved ionization stages are taken into account with aid of the correlations between relative abundances of various ions which had been obtained from the grid of the photoionization models of planetary nebulae luminescence calculated by us. Simple approximative expressions for the determination of He/H, C/H, N/H, O/H, Ne/H, Mg/H, Si/H, S/H, and Ar/H are found. The chemical composition of 130 galactic planetary nebulae is revised. The observational data were compiled from 73 papers of many authors published in 1972–1991. Our mean abundances of C, N, O, Ne, S, Ar are 0.1–0.3 dex lower than the mean abundances of these elements found previously by other authors. Such a discrepancy may be due to an overestimation of “empirical” ionization correction factors in previous works. It is shown that the abundance of oxygen in massive stars-precursors may be reduced by 0.2 dex on average due to the ON-cycle, but the abundance of neon remains practically unchanged. A comparative analysis of the abundances in the galactic disk, bulge and halo nebulae is carried out. We found that helium is enhanced in the galactic bulge nebulae relative to the disk ones, but the mean nitrogen abundance and mean ratio N/O are lower in the bulge. Our data suggest that the second dredge-up did not take place in the stars-precursors of the bulge planetaries, and the helium and nitrogen enhancement in these nebulae is due to other mixing processes. The mean abundances of O, Ne, S, Ar in the galactic disk and galactic bulge nebulae are quite similar, and we must conclude that the stars-precursors of the bulge planetaries had been formed during the same burst of star formation as the stars-precursors of the disk nebulae, while the halo nebulae correspond to the previous burst.

The production of the bulk of barium has long been ascribed to the main component of the s-process, whose astrophysical site has been envisaged in the convective He shell of Thermally Pulsing Asymptotic Giant Branch (TP-AGB) stars of low mass (1–3 M ⊙; see Käppeler et al. 1990). The main neutron source is the 13C(α, n)16O reaction, operating at the thermal energy of kT = 12keV. We have calculated neutron captures in such environment with an updated nuclear physics, adopting the neutron capture cross sections of Beer, Voß, & Winters (1992) together with their temperature-dependence. Stellar models producing a mean neutron exposure of τ0 ≃ 0.30 mb−1 are able to reproduce the solar distribution of the s-abundances satisfactory, but the Ba isotopes show some overproduction. Such a strong indication suggests a revision of the Ba cross sections (see Gallino, Raiteri, & Busso 1992). Once that a suitable choice of σn, γ(Ba) is made, it is found that a r-contribution to solar Ba of the order of 10% can be expected.

We present abundance determinations, in particular of carbon, and C/O ratios, for 11 Galactic bulge planetary nebulae (PN) based on our low resolution UV data from IUE observations and optical spectrophotometry from the Anglo-Australian Telescope. We compare the observed abundances with those predicted by dredge-up theory for the high metallicity Galactic bulge. The sample abundances are also contrasted with the abundances found for PN in the Galactic disk. The mean C/O ratio for the bulge PN is significantly lower than that found for Galactic disk PN. Further, we present an abundance analysis of the very metal-poor bulge PN M2-29. From an analysis of the differential extinction found from the observed ratios of the He ii 1640,4686Å lines, we find that the ultraviolet reddening law towards the bulge is steeper than in the solar neighbourhood.

It is often mentioned in the literature that, in planetary nebulae, carbon abundancesderived from optical lines are systematically much larger than derived from UV lines. Various explanations have been proposed: line blends, inaccurate atomic physics, temperature fluctuations, non uniform distribution of carbon inside nebulae… Here, we study the effect of random errors in the line intensity measurements.

The helium-to-metals enrichment ratio (dY/dZ) and the pregalactic helium abundance (Yp ) are important parameters for the understanding of the galactic chemical evolution, and also as a cosmological test to the Big Bang theory. In this work, we present a new determination of these parameters based on a sample of galactic HII regions, HII galaxies, and planetary nebulae.

We carried out spectroscopic observations of N67 (in the SMC), and N66, N97 and N102 (in the LMC) with the 4-m telescope of CTIO. The wavelength range is λλ 3500–7400. From these we obtained physical conditions and chemical abundances of these objects.

We have developed a model to calculate the evolution of AGB stars in a synthetic way. The evolution is started at the first thermal pulse (TP) and ends when the envelope mass has been lost due to mass loss or when the core mass reaches the Chandrasekhar mass.

We report new spectroscopic data on a sample constituted of 21 well observed planetary nebulae in the LMC. The observations were performed at the National Laboratory for Astrophysics (Brazópolis — Brasil) using the 1.6m telescope and a CCD detector. Extinction, electron temperature and densities were derived for all the planetaries and a comparison is made with results obtained by other surveys, including common objects. Chemical abundances of helium, nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur and argon were also derived for all sample objects. Enrichment of the progenitor stars in He and N due to mixing episodes as well as the relation with the chemical evolution of the LMC are discussed in terms of our data and other observations.

There appears to exist in the minds of most of the participants of this conference a highly stylized picture of how the majority of all stars evolve after reaching the asymptotic giant branch. This is a fascinating development as, just three decades ago, no one understood what an asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star is or does, either theoretically or observationally, and, just two decades ago, no one understood the nature of the transition from AGB to planetary nebula, other than that it happened. And, yet, today, the evolution from AGB to planetary nebula and to white dwarf is described by a very beguiling picture whose outlines have become substantially fixed.