MINI REVIEW article
Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Extragalactic Astronomy
This article is part of the Research TopicConnecting Planetary Nebulae with Their Host Galaxy Stellar Population PropertiesView all 3 articles
Planetary nebulae as tracers of accreted stellar populations in massive galaxies in groups and clusters
Provisionally accepted
- 1Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO (FINCA), University of Turku, Turku, Finland
- 2Tuorla Observatory, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Turun yliopisto, Turku, Finland
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Planetary nebulae (PNe) are valuable spatial and kinematic tracers of nearby galaxies. In this mini-review, I focus on their role in tracing the halo and intra-cluster/intra-group light assembly in groups and clusters of galaxies within 100 Mpc and, in particular, the link between characteristic PN metrics such as the α-parameter and the PN luminosity function and changes from the underlying in-situ to ex-situ stellar populations. These results from nearby groups and clusters are placed into context with integral-field spectroscopic surveys of galaxies, which allow the co-spatial measurement of PN and stellar population properties. I provide an outlook on upcoming instrumentation that will provide new opportunities for the study of extragalactic PN populations. I address the challenges of reconciling observations of extragalactic PN populations with predictions from stellar evolution models and how revised late-stellar-evolution models have alleviated some of the tensions between observations and theory.
Keywords: Planetary nebulae: general, galaxies: clusters, galaxies: groups, galaxies; elliptical and lenticular, Cd, galaxies: halos
Received: 25 Jul 2025; Accepted: 27 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hartke. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Johanna Hartke, johanna.hartke@utu.fi
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