Planetary Nebulae in Face-On Spiral Galaxies. II. Planetary Nebula Spectroscopy

Abstract

As the second step in our investigation of the mass-to-light ratio of spiral disks, we present the results of a spectroscopic survey of planetary nebulae (PNe) in five nearby, low-inclination galaxies: IC 342, M74 (NGC 628), M83 (NGC 5236), M94 (NGC 4736), and M101 (NGC 5457). Using 50 setups of the WIYN/Hydra and Blanco/Hydra spectrographs, and 25 observations with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope's Medium Resolution Spectrograph, we determine the radial velocities of 99, 102, 162, 127, and 48 PNe, respectively, to a precision better than 15 km/s. Although the main purpose of this data set is to facilitate dynamical mass measurements throughout the inner and outer disks of large spiral galaxies, our spectroscopy has other uses as well. Here, we co-add these spectra to show that to first order, the [O III] and Balmer line ratios of planetary nebulae vary little over the top ~1.5 mag of the planetary nebula luminosity function. The only obvious spectral change occurs with [N II], which increases in strength as one proceeds down the luminosity function. We also show that typical [O III]-bright planetaries have E(B-V) ~ 0.2 of circumstellar extinction, and that this value is virtually independent of [O III] luminosity. We discuss the implications this has for understanding the population of PN progenitors.

12 pages, 6 figures, 7 tables- 1 is mostly on-line only; accepted to ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (18)

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• Resolving the Disc-Halo Degeneracy I: A Look at NGC 628
• Stellar feedback in M83 as observed with MUSE -- II. Analysis of the HII region population: ionisation budget and pre-SN feedback
• The Planetary Nebula Luminosity Function at the Dawn of Gaia
• The True Luminosities of Planetary Nebulae in M31's Bulge: Massive Central Stars from an Old Stellar Population
• A Survey for Planetary Nebulae in M31 Globular Clusters
• Resolving the Disc-Halo Degeneracy II: NGC 6946
• The Planetary Nebulae Population in the Central Regions of M32: the SAURON view
• The Infrared Massive Stellar Content of M83
• Hubble Space Telescope Spectroscopy of a Planetary Nebula in an M31 Open Cluster: Hot-Bottom Burning at $3.4M_{\odot }$
• Dynamical measurement of the stellar surface density of face-on galaxies
• MUSE crowded field 3D spectroscopy in NGC 300 : IV. Planetary nebula luminosity function
• Towards Precision Cosmology With Improved PNLF Distances Using VLT-MUSE. III. Impact of Stellar Populations in Early-Type Galaxy
• Yellow Post-Asymptotic-Giant-Branch Stars as Standard Candles. I. Calibration of the Luminosity Function in Galactic Globular Clusters