CFHT UM2025 - Presentation Details
Abstract Details
Title: Science from the SIGNALS planetary nebula survey: stellar populations, PNLF distances and dark matter
Presenter: Nancy Yang
Abstract:
As the progeny of low-to-intermediate mass stars, planetary nebulae (PNe) directly trace the stellar and kinematic properties of their parent population. The PN luminosity function (PNLF) serves as a secondary distance indicator and its slope is sensitive to stellar age and metallicity (and thus the galaxy's star formation history). Traditionally detected via narrow-band imaging and follow-up multi-object spectroscopy, PNe studies are now being revolutionised by integral-field spectroscopy. In this talk, I will describe the groundbreaking SIGNALS PN survey, that targets 40 nearby late-type galaxies (previously poorly studied) and uses the revolutionary imaging Fourier transform spectrograph SITELLE on the CFHT, with an unrivalled 11'x11' field-of-view (FOV; over 100 times that of VLT/MUSE). This FOV is uniquely suited to simultaneous studies of the galaxy discs and haloes, thus allowing us to probe the galaxy PNLFs and halo stellar populations and kinematics for the first time. I will also present detection statistics, metallicity dependencies, and PNLF distances for several galaxies each with ~30-100 PNe, along with benchmarking comparisons to the few existing studies. The SIGNALS PN survey represents a step change in our understanding of PNe in spiral galaxies.