The Herschel Planetary Nebulae Survey: HerPlaNS


Friday, 26 July 2013 9 a.m. — 10 a.m. MST

AURA Lecture Hall

NOIRLab South Colloquia
DJAZIA LADJAL (Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Denver and Gemini South Visiting Astronomer)

HerPlaNS is a Herschel Open Time program that exploits the unprecedented spatial resolving power in the far infrared (from 50um to 670um) of the Herschel Space Observatory to investigate a sample of 11 planetary nebulae (PNe). The aim of the program is to study the formation and evolution of the circumstellar material of PNe by simultaneously tracing the dust and gas components using Imaging and spatially resolved Spectroscopy data. HerPlaNS is part of a community wide multi-wavelength study (from X-ray to Radio) that tackles the different aspect of the PNe evolution, from understanding the shaping mechanisms of the nebulae, establishing a coherent picture of the energetics around the central white dwarf to properly account for the amount of material that is recycled in the interstellar medium. In this talk, I will introduce the HerPlaNS, show its scientific potential and present some of our first results.