PN abundances in NGC 5128 with FORS

J. R. Walsh¹, G. Jacoby², R. Pelletier³, N. A Walton⁴

¹ST-ECF, ESO, Garching, Germany
²WIYN, Tucson, USA
³Kapteyn Laboratorium, Groningen, The Netherlands
⁴Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, England

Catalogued PN in the nearest large elliptical galaxy NGC 5128 (Centaurus-A) have been observed with the VLT FORS1 spectrograph in multi-slit mode. Three fields with offsets from the galaxy centre of 4.0, 7.5 and 14.5 arcmin were selected and 21, 20 and 9 PN respectively were observed. Low dispersion blue (3500-6000Å) and red spectra (4500-8500Å) were obtained covering the strong diagnostic emission lines. For the brightest spectra, the fainter diagnostic lines, such as [O III]4363Å, could be detected. Abundances derived from the PN in the three fields are presented and discussed with relevance to abundance gradients in elliptical galaxies.