Hubble Space Telescope Narrowband Imaging of the Planetary Nebula SMP 83/WS 35/N66

Vassiliadis, E.
Bibliographical reference

Astrophysical Journal v.465, p.748

Advertised on:
7
1996
Number of authors
1
IAC number of authors
1
Citations
11
Refereed citations
9
Description
LMC-SMP83 is a planetary nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud whose central star is recently reported by Pena et al. to show decreases in temperature and luminosity of at least 50% over a time span of seven years. Serendipitously, this object is observed with the Planetary and Faint Object Cameras onboard the Hubble Space Telescope between 1991 July and 1994 February. The Planetary Camera F502 N filter is sufficiently narrow to isolate the [O III] λ5007 nebular emission line, but the Faint Object Camera F501N filter is wide enough to include some contamination by the [O III] λ4959 line. The HST images confirm the nebular flux to be constant. The stellar fluxes are in agreement with previously published ground-based measurements, showing an exponential increase in flux with time. A published, low core-mass stellar evolutionary track is scaled to depict the evolution of a 1.0 M_sun_ central star, which is the published core mass for LMC-SMP83. Assuming the central star has suffered a late He shell flash, the rate of increase in the observed flux is slower than that predicted from theory, suggesting the central star of LMC-SMP83 is less than 1.0 M_sun_. However, before revising the mass of the central star, a self-consistent calculation of a 1.0 M_sun_ track is necessary.