(dusty)MOCASSIN: 3D photoionization and dust RT modelling of PNe

B. Ercolano1, M.J. Barlow1, P.J. Storey and X.-W.- Liu
1 University College London, UK


We present results obtained with the gas-only version of the three-dimensional Monte Carlo code MOCASSIN, which has been used for the photoionisation modelling of two Planetary Nebulae (PN) with hydrogen deficient stellar cores: Abell 30 and NGC 1501. In the case of the hydrogen-deficient polar knots of the born-again PN Abell 30, a model was constructed with inhomogeneous elemental abundances and gas densities. For NGC 1501 the ionised gas surrounding the Wolf Rayet core was modelled using a three-dimensional density distribution derived by the Padova group from long slit spectra. Details of a new version of the code - dustyMOCASSIN - are also presented here. This version features a fully self-consistent and three-dimensional treatment of the dust radiative transfer as well as all the features included in the gas-only version. The code will provide, for the first time, a means for treating non-spherical and/or inhomogeneous environment where dust grains are mixed with a photoionised gas. The dustyMOCASSIN code is currently undergoing rigorous benchmarking and some preliminary results will be shown here.