Abstract:
Planetary Nebulae (PNe) are objects of very complex morphologies and the details of
their spatial structure formation are still object of investigation. There are few works
that take into account the three-dimensional character of objects. In addition to the
spherical structure, the older models also assume that the abundance of elements is
uniform throughout the PNe. Just few studies explore the hypothesis that there are
variations in abundances. In this work, we present a model for the planetary nebula Menzel
1 made with the code MOCASSIN. Its bipolar structure and homogeneous abundances
were taken into account in order to analyze how they can influence the results obtained.
We show that the results obtained with the updated model lead to significantly different
values when compared to previous models for the same object. We discuss the influence of
atomic data and the detailed treatment of diffuse radiation on the discrepancies found.
With the NEAT code, integrated and bidimensional abundances were determined from the
flux maps derived from the model. The abundance maps show discrepancies with respect
to the initial parameters of the model. We conclude that the empirical method creates
non-real variations since this method does not take into account the three-dimensional
complexity of the object’s structure.
