Searcharxiv⌕ Search

arXiv subjects

W. J. Maciel

Publications and source records attributed to W. J. Maciel.

64 records · Page 4Linked to original sources
arXiv2000

Helium contamination from the progenitor stars of planetary nebulae: The He/H radial gradient and the Delta Y/Delta Z enrichment ratio

In this work, two aspects of the chemical evolution of 4He in the Galaxy are considered on the basis of a sample of disk planetary nebulae (PN). First, an application of corrections owing to the contamination of 4He from the evolution of the progenitor stars shows that the He/H abundance by number of atoms is reduced by 0.012 to 0.015 in average, leading to an essentially flat He/H radial distribution. Second, a determination of the helium to heavy element enrichment ratio using the same corrections leads to values in the range 2.8 < Delta Y/Delta Z < 3.6 for Yp = 0.23 and 2.0 < Delta Y/Delta Z < 2.8 for Yp = 0.24, in good agreement with recent independent determinations and theoretical models.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2000

Stars and Planetary Nebulae in the Galactic Bulge

We compare the populations of Red Giant stars and Planetary Nebulae in the Galactic Bulge, in the light of recent determinations of their abundances patterns. We find both populations to be compatible. From the planetary nebulae, we find evidences that the Bulge did not form stars recently. The whole abundances pattern remains however puzzling, some elements favoring a quick evolution of the Galactic Bulge (Mg and Ti), and others a much slower one (He, O, Si, S, Ar and Ca).

astro-ph↗
arXiv2000

Chemical enrichment and star formation in the Milky Way disk; I. Sample description and chromospheric age-metallicity relation

The age-metallicity relation of the solar neighbourhood is studied using a sample of 552 late-type dwarfs. This sample was built from the intersection of photometric catalogues with chromospheric activity surveys of the Mount Wilson group. For these stars, metallicities were estimated from uvby data, and ages were calculated from their chromospheric emission levels using a new metallicity-dependent chromospheric activity-age relation developed by Rocha-Pinto & Maciel (1998). A careful estimate of the errors in the chromospheric age is made. The errors in the chromospheric indices are shown to include partially the effects of the stellar magnetic cycles, although a detailed treatment of this error is still beyond our knowledge. It is shown that the results are not affected by the presence of unresolved binaries in the sample. We derive an age-metallicity relation which confirms the mean trend found by previous workers. The mean metallicity shows a slow, steady increase with time, amounting at least 0.56 dex in 15 Gyr. The initial metallicity of the disk is around -0.70 dex, in agreement with the G dwarf metallicity distribution. According to our data, the intrinsic cosmic dispersion in metal abundances is around 0.13 dex, a factor of two smaller than that found by Edvardsson et al. (1993). We show that chromospheric ages are compatible with isochrone ages, within the expected errors, so that the difference in the scatter cannot be caused by the accuracy of our ages and metallicities. This reinforces some suggestions that the Edvarsson et al.'s sample is not suitable to the determination of the age-metallicity relation.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2000

Chemical enrichment and star formation in the Milky Way disk; II. Star formation history

A chromospheric age distribution of 552 late-type dwarfs is transformed into a star formation history by the application of scale height corrections, stellar evolutionary corrections and volume corrections. We show that the disk of our Galaxy has experienced enhanced episodes of star formation at 0-1 Gyr, 2-5 Gyr and 7-9 Gyr ago, although the reality of the latter burst is still uncertain. The star sample birthsites are distributed over a very large range of distances because of orbital diffusion, and so give an estimate of the global star formation rate. These results are compared with the metal-enrichment rate, given by the age-metallicity relation, with the expected epochs of close encounters between our Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds, and with previous determinations of the star formation history. Simulations are used to examine the age-dependent smearing of the star formation history due to age uncertainties, and the broadening of the recovered features, as well as to measure the probability level that the history derived to be produced by statistical fluctuations of a constant star formation history. We show with more than 98% level of confidence that the the star formation of our Galaxy was not constant.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2000

Some aspects of the chemical evolution of 4He in the Galaxy: the He/H abundance gradient and the Delta Y/Delta Z enrichment ratio

Two aspects of the chemical evolution of 4He in the Galaxy are considered on the basis of a sample of disk planetary nebulae by the application of corrections due to the contamination of 4He from the progenitor stars. First, the He/H radial gradient is analyzed, and then, the helium to heavy element enrichment ratio is determined for metallicities up to the solar value.

astro-ph↗
arXiv1999

Observations of planetary nebulae in the Galactic Bulge

High quality spectrophotometric observations of 30 Planetary Nebulae in the Galactic Bulge have been made. Accurate reddenings, plasma parameters, and abundances of He,O,N,S,Ar,Cl are derived. We find the abundances of O,S,Ar in the Planetary Nebulae in the Galactic Bulge to be comparable with the abundances of the Planetary Nebulae in the Disk, high abundances being maybe slightly more frequent in the Bulge. The distribution of the N/O ratio does not present in the Galactic Bulge Planetary Nebulae the extension to high values that it presents in the Disk Planetary Nebulae. We interpret this as a signature of the greater age of Bulge Planetary Nebulae. We thus find the Bulge Planetary Nebulae to be an old population, slightly more metal-rich than the Disk Planetary Nebulae. The population of the Bulge Planetary Nebulae shows hence the same characteristics than the Bulge stellar population.

astro-ph↗
arXiv1999

Metallicity distribution of bulge planetary nebulae and the [O/Fe] x [Fe/H] relation

The O/H metallicity distribution of different samples of planetary nebulae in the bulge of the Milky Way and M31 are compared. O/H abundances are converted into [Fe/H] metallicity by the use of theoretical [O/Fe] x [Fe/H] relationships both for the bulge and the solar neighbourhood. It is found that these relationships imply an offset of [Fe/H] abundances by a factor up to 0.5 dex for bulge nebulae. Systematic errors in the O/H abundances as suggested by some recent recombination line work, ON cycling and statistical uncertainties are unable to explain the observed offset, suggesting that the adopted relationship for the bulge probably overestimates the oxygen enhancement relative to iron.

astro-ph↗
arXiv1998

Consistency of the metallicity distributions of nearby F, G and K dwarfs

The consistency of the metallicity distributions of F, G and K dwarfs is studied. We present a new metallicity distribution for K dwarfs using metallicities determined from uvby photometry. There is a remarkable paucity of metal-poor K dwarfs in analogy with the G dwarf problem. We show that late-type dwarfs have consistent metallicity distributions. We also propose preliminary corrections to these distributions to take into account the contamination of the uvby indices due to the chromospheric activity in these stars, since around 30% of the nearby late-type dwarfs have active chromospheres. We consider the possibility that the metallicity distribution of cooler stars may be different from that of the hotter stars due to (i) metal-enhanced star formation and (ii) a metallicity bias in the catalogue of nearby stars. We conclude that these hypotheses are unlikely to produce important differences in the metallicity distributions of late-type dwarfs.

astro-ph↗
arXiv1998

Metallicity effects on the chromospheric activity-age relation for late-type dwarfs

We show that there is a relationship between the age excess, defined as the difference between the stellar isochrone and chromospheric ages, and the metallicity as measured by the index [Fe/H] for late-type dwarfs. The chromospheric age tends to be lower than the isochrone age for metal-poor stars, and the opposite occurs for metal-rich objects. We suggest that this could be an effect of neglecting the metallicity dependence of the calibrated chromospheric emission-age relation. We propose a correction to account for this dependence. We also investigate the metallicity distributions of these stars, and show that there are distinct trends according to the chromospheric activity level. Inactive stars have a metallicity distribution which resembles the metallicity distribution of solar neighbourhood stars (Rocha-Pinto & Maciel 1996), while active stars appear to be concentrated in an activity strip on the log R'HK - [Fe/H] diagram. We provide some explanations for these trends, and show that the chromospheric emission-age relation probably has different slopes on the two sides of the Vaughan-Preston gap.

astro-ph↗