Elemental Abundances Of Planetary Nebulae

We present a prelimenary abundance analysis of data from an optical spectroscopic survey of compact planetary nebulae (PNe) in the Galactic disk. This is an ongoing survey to build a comprehensive database of Galactic compact PN chemical abundances. The optical spectra of 14 PNe were obtained with the 4.1-meter Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope. Here we present physical diagnostics such as electron temperature and density for each PN derived from the reddening-corrected line intensities, and we also determine ionic and elemental abundances for He, N, O, Ne, S and Ar. We will use these abundances to constrain stellar evolution models and to determine the Galactic radial metallicity gradient in subsequent analyses. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant AAG-1616807.