Magellanic Cloud Planetary Nebulae ("MCPN")

MCPN is a project based on Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging with STIS and WFPC2, and optical and ultraviolet slitless spectroscopy. With HST, Magellanic Cloud PNs can be resolved in their sizes and shapes, and their central stars can be detected. Planetary nebulae (PNs) are the gaseous relics of the outermost red giant layers, ejected as a superwind after the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) phase. The importance of studying Magellanic Cloud Planetary Nebulae (MCPN) is twofold: it allows the determination of physical parameters of PNs and their central stars, since their distances are known (as opposed to Galactic PN distances, that suffer large uncertainties); and they are the ideal probes of stellar evolution in low-metallicity galaxies.