[29.15] $PNe$: An Integrated Semi-Automated Nebular Abundance Package

AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 29 Observation Processing, Calibration and Control
Poster, Monday, 9:20am-7:00pm, January 9, 2006, Exhibit Hall

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[29.15] PNe: An Integrated Semi-Automated Nebular Abundance Package

M.D. Johnson (Wesleyan U.), J.S. Levitt (Williams College), R.B.C. Henry (U. Oklahoma), K.B. Kwitter (Williams College)

We present new methods for correcting and refining the analysis of spectroscopic data from planetary nebulae. The package, called PNe, can ingest emission line fluxes directly from IRAF splot logs, and is based on the C programming language. As part of the ongoing development of an integrated, user-configurable tool for nebular data analysis, we have devised a process for simultaneously correcting line fluxes for (i) interstellar extinction, (ii) contamination from He⁺⁺ recombination, (iii) interdependence of diagnostic ratios on temperature and density, and (iv) the dependence of H\alpha/H\beta on temperature and density. The actual abundance routine is based on five-level-atom calculations. Output consists of observed and de-reddened line strengths, the reddening constant, c, the intrinsic nebular H\alpha/H\beta ratio, various ionic temperatures and densities, ionic abundances, ionization correction factors and total abundances, for which various LaTeX tables can be automatically generated.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium, the Bronfman Science Center of Williams College and NSF grant AST-0307118.

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