A&A 451, 925-935 (2006)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20054192

Planetary nebulae with emission-line central stars

K. Gesicki¹, A. A. Zijlstra², A. Acker³, S. K. Górny⁴, K. Gozdziewski¹ and J. R. Walsh<sup>5

1</sup>  Centrum Astronomii UMK, ul. Gagarina 11, 87-100 Torun, Poland
    e-mail: [Krzysztof.Gesicki;Krzysztof.Gozdziewski]@astri.uni.torun.pl
²  School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, PO Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK
    e-mail: a.zijlstra@umist.ac.uk
³  Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Université, 67000 Strasbourg, France
    e-mail: acker@astro.u-strasbg.fr
⁴  Copernicus Astronomical Center, ul.Rabianska 8, 87-100 Torun, Poland
    e-mail: skg@ncac.torun.pl
⁵  Space Telescope European Co-ordinating Facility, ESO, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, 85748 Garching, Germany
    e-mail: jwalsh@eso.org

(Received 12 September 2005 / Accepted 29 December 2005)

Abstract
The kinematic structure of a sample of planetary nebulae, consisting of 23 [WR] central stars, 21 weak emission line stars (wels), and 57 non-emission line central stars, is studied. The [WR] stars are shown to be surrounded by turbulent nebulae, a characteristic shared by some wels but almost completely absent from the non-emission line stars. The fraction of objects showing turbulence for non-emission-line stars, wels, and [WR] stars is 7%, 24%, and 91%, respectively. The [WR] stars show a distinct IRAS 12-micron excess, indicative of small dust grains, which is not found for wels. The [WR]-star nebulae are on average more centrally condensed than those of other stars. On the age-temperature diagram, the wels are located on tracks of both high and low stellar mass, while [WR] stars trace a narrow range of intermediate masses. Emission-line stars are not found on the cooling track. One group of wels may form a sequence wels-[WO] stars with increasing temperature. For the other groups, both the wels and the [WR] stars appear to represent several, independent evolutionary tracks. We find a discontinuity in the [WR] stellar temperature distribution and suggest different evolutionary sequences above and below the temperature gap. One group of cool [WR] stars has no counterpart among any other group of PNe and may represent binary evolution. A prime factor distinguishing wels and [WR] stars appears to be stellar luminosity. We find no evidence for an increase in the nebular expansion velocity with time.

Key words: planetary nebulae: general -- stars: evolution

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© ESO 2006

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