Letizia Stanghellini

Title: 
Planetary nebulae as probes of the Milky Way structure
Abstract:
We review the population of Galactic planetary nebulae (PN) in the context of Galactic disks, their formation, and evolution. PN are convenient abundance probes, representing the nebular progeny of stars with a considerable range of turnoff masses, thus  probing the Galactic chemistry at different reference times. The difficulty of determining the PN distances is mitigated by using Magellanic Cloud calibration, and it will be greatly alleviated with the advent of the GAIA surveys. By studying the population of Galactic PN (and their up-to-date abundances) both radially and transversally within the Galactic disk we set important constraints to metallicity gradients, disk evolution, and thin disk/thick disk transition.
(with M. Haywood)