Probing the physical and chemical properties of planetary nebulae using precision photoionization modeling

Abstract Planetary nebulae (PNe) are remnants of evolved stars, fundamental for understanding stellar life cycles and galactic enrichment. In this work, we present a summary of our recent work using three-dimensional models and spatially resolved constraints to examine the physical and chemical properties of PNe, with a particular focus on preliminary results for the PN NGC 3132. Our results indicate that a star of about 3M ⊙ , surrounded by a shell, wind, or disk with approximately 5.0×10 −6 M ⊙ and extending to about 300AU is necessary to adequately reproduce the observations, consistent with recent JWST findings. We also discuss the importance of this methodology in studying the properties of the progenitor stars and making abundance determinations.