Carbon Abundances in Planetary Nebulae in the Galactic Bulge

Abstract

The galactic nuclear bulge is a well defined population, but it is one that is relatively difficult to study in detail because its members never stray into the solar vicinity and they are both distant and obscured. Mould (1982) has summarized much of our knowledge of the masses and composition of stars in the bulge. The red giants resemble those in metal-rich old open clusters and the late M giants are either younger than galactic globular clusters or super-metal-rich or both. Whitford and Rich (1983) have demonstrated the existence of K-giants that are super-metal-rich in iron and Wood and Bessell (1983) have interpreted the properties of a sample of long period variables in the bulge as those of a young, super-metal-rich population.

Planetary nebulae

“…Some papers describe detailed studies of selected infrared spectral bands. (See for example Whitelock, 1985;Pottasch etal. 1986;and others.…”