Metallicity gradients in M31, M33, NGC 300 and the Milky Way using abundances of different elements

Abstract

Metallicity gradients derived from planetary nebulae (PNe) using O, Ne, and Ar abundances are studied and compared to those from HII regions in the galaxies M31, M33, NGC 300 and the Milky Way. Galactocentric radii and chemical abundances were collected from the literature, carefully selecting a homogeneous sample for each galaxy. Metallicity gradients shown by PNe are flatter than those of HII regions in all cases. The extreme case is M31 where PN abundances are not related to galactocentric distances and the gradients are consistent with zero. To analyze the evolution of gradients with time we build gradients for Peimbert Type I and non-Type I PNe finding that Type I PNe show steeper gradients than non-Type I PNe and more similar to the ones of HII regions indicating that the chemical gradients might steepen with time. Alternatively, the flat gradients for old PNe show that radial migration could have an important role in the evolution of galaxies.