MINI REVIEW article
Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Stellar and Solar Physics
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspas.2025.1709148
This article is part of the Research TopicConnecting Planetary Nebulae with Their Host Galaxy Stellar Population PropertiesView all articles
Planetary nebulae: a key tool to reconstruct the evolutionary history of stars
Provisionally accepted
- 1Astronomical Observatory of Rome (INAF), Rome, Italy
- 2Universita degli Studi Roma Tre, Rome, Italy
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Planetary nebulae, among the most fascinating objects in the sky, have been extensively investigated in the past years, because their study provides important information on the low and intermediate mass stellar populations of the host environment, formed earlier than 100 Myr ago. We report on the recent progresses achieved in the study of this class of objects, regarding the dust and gas content of the nebula, which allows us to reconstruct the dust formation process occurred during the previous asymptotic giant branch phase, and the chain of events occurred since the stars leave the asymptotic giant branch until the planetary nebula stage. The possibility offered by these studies to assess the role played by the stars of low and intermediate mass as dust manufactures in the Universe is also commented.
Keywords: Planetary nebulae: general, Planetary nebulae: individual, stars: AGB and post-AGB, stars: abundances, stars: carbon, stars: evolution
Received: 19 Sep 2025; Accepted: 21 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ventura, Tosi, Dell'Agli and Bianchi. 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: Paolo Ventura, paolo.ventura@inaf.it
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