Abundances in Galactic Bulge planetary nebulae from optical, ultraviolet and infrared observations

TL;DR

This study measures zinc abundances in Galactic Bulge planetary nebulae using optical, ultraviolet, and infrared data, providing insights into iron depletion and elemental ratios in these environments.

Contribution

It introduces new zinc abundance measurements from VLT observations and compares them with existing data to study elemental depletions in planetary nebulae.

Findings

Zinc abundances are generally sub-solar in the sample.

[O/Zn] ratios are consistent with or enriched relative to Solar.

UVES data agree with previous literature results.

Abstract

Iron suffers from high levels of depletion in the highly ionized environments of planetary nebulae, making the direct determination of undepleted elemental iron abundances difficult. Zinc, which does not suffer from the same depletion effects as iron, may be used as a surrogate element to measure iron abundances as there is an approximately constant zinc-to-iron ratio across a wide range of metallicities. In this paper, we report zinc abundances of six Galactic Bulge planetary nebulae determined from new observations taken with ISAAC on the Very Large Telescope, Chile, prior to the instrument's decommissioning as well as a further three based upon literature observations. UVES data of the sample planetary nebulae are presented and have been used to derive abundances, temperatures and densities of a variety of elements and ions. The abundances derived from the UVES data agree well with results from the literature. [Zn/H], determined from the ISAAC observations, is found to be generally sub-solar and [O/Zn] is found to be either consistent or enriched with respect to Solar.