Lead Chief Investigator

Amanda I Karakas Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, College of Physical Sciences, Australian National University

Project Title

The heavy element composition of post-AGB stars and planetary nebulae

Brief Description for General Publications

Low and intermediate-mass red giant stars play a crucial role in the origin and evolution of the elements. The operation of the slow-neutron capture process (s-process) in these stars synthesized up to half of all elements heavier than iron in the solar system, with most of the lead on Earth coming from ancient red giants with little heavy elements of their own. Recent observations of s-process-enriched post-AGB and planetary nebulae has provided an unprecedented wealth of observational constraints on the operation of the s- process in stars of various initial masses and compositions. In this project we will compute s-process abundance predictions for red giant stars to compare to the observational data.