- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/MNRAS/455/2627
- Title:
- Oxygen abundance gradient in M81
- Short Name:
- J/MNRAS/455/2627
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We study the sensitivity of the methods available for abundance determinations in HII regions to potential observational problems. We compare the dispersions they introduce around the oxygen and nitrogen abundance gradients when applied to five different sets of spectra of HII regions in the galaxy M81. Our sample contains 116 HII regions with galactocentric distances of 3 to 33kpc, including 48 regions observed by us with the OSIRIS long-slit spectrograph at the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias telescope. The direct method can be applied to 31 regions, where we can get estimates of the electron temperature. The different methods imply oxygen abundance gradients with slopes of -0.010 to -0.002dex/kpc, and dispersions in the range 0.06-0.25dex. The direct method produces the shallowest slope and the largest dispersion, illustrating the difficulty of obtaining good estimates of the electron temperature. Three of the strong-line methods, C, ONS, and N2, are remarkably robust, with dispersions of ~0.06dex, and slopes in the range -0.008 to -0.006dex/kpc. The robustness of each method can be directly related to its sensitivity to the line intensity ratios that are more difficult to measure properly. Since the results of the N2 method depend strongly on the N/O abundance ratio and on the ionization parameter, we recommend the use of the C and ONS methods when no temperature estimates are available or when they have poor quality, although the behaviour of these methods when confronted with regions that have different properties and different values of N/O should be explored.
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Search Results
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/623/A7
- Title:
- Oxygen abundance in disk galaxies
- Short Name:
- J/A+A/623/A7
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We examine the possible dependence of the radial oxygen abundance distribution on non-axisymmetrical structures (bar/spirals) and other macroscopic parameters such as the mass, the optical radius R25, the color g-r, and the surface brightness of the galaxy. A sample of disk galaxies from the third data release of the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area Survey (CALIFA DR3) is considered. We adopted the Fourier amplitude A2 of the surface brightness as a quantitative characteristic of the strength of nonaxisymmetric structures in a galactic disk, in addition to the commonly used morphologic division for A, AB, and B types based on the Hubble classification. To distinguish changes in local oxygen abundance caused by the non-axisymmetrical structures, the multiparametric mass-metallicity relation was constructed as a function of parameters such as the bar/spiral pattern strength, the disk size, color index g-r in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) bands, and central surface brightness of the disk. The gas-phase oxygen abundance gradient is determined by using the R calibration We find that there is no significant impact of the non-axisymmetric structures such as a bar and/or spiral patterns on the local oxygen abundance and radial oxygen abundance gradient of disk galaxies. Galaxies with higher mass, however, exhibit flatter oxygen abundance gradients in units of dex/kpc, but this effect is significantly less prominent for the oxygen abundance gradients in units of dex/R25 and almost disappears when the inner parts are avoided (R>0.25R25). We show that the oxygen abundance in the central part of the galaxy depends neither on the optical radius R25 nor on the color g-r or the surface brightness of the galaxy. Instead, outside the central part of the galaxy, the oxygen abundance increases with g-r value and central surface brightness of the disk.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/695/580
- Title:
- Oxygen abundance in M83
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/695/580
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We have obtained deep multiobject optical spectra of 49 HII regions in the outer disk of the spiral galaxy M83 (=NGC 5236) with the FORS2 spectrograph at the Very Large Telescope. The targets span the range in galactocentric distance between 0.64 and 2.64 times the R_25_ isophotal radius (5.4-22.3kpc), and 31 of them are located at R>R_25_, thus belonging to the extreme outer disk of the galaxy, populated by UV complexes revealed recently by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer satellite. In order to derive the nebular chemical abundances, we apply several diagnostics of the oxygen abundance, including R_23_, [NII]/[OII], and the [OIII]{lambda}4363 auroral line, which was detected in four HII regions.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/MNRAS/462/2715
- Title:
- Oxygen abundance maps of CALIFA galaxies
- Short Name:
- J/MNRAS/462/2715
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We construct maps of the oxygen abundance distribution across the discs of 88 galaxies using Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area survey (CALIFA) Data Release 2 (DR2) spectra. The position of the centre of a galaxy (coordinates on the plate) was also taken from the CALIFA DR2. The galaxy inclination, the position angle of the major axis, and the optical radius were determined from the analysis of the surface brightnesses in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) g and r bands of the photometric maps of SDSS Data Release 9. We explore the global azimuthal abundance asymmetry in the discs of the CALIFA galaxies and the presence of a break in the radial oxygen abundance distribution. We found that there is no significant global azimuthal asymmetry for our sample of galaxies, i.e. the asymmetry is small, usually lower than 0.05dex. The scatter in oxygen abundances around the abundance gradient has a comparable value, <~0.05dex. A significant (possibly dominant) fraction of the asymmetry can be attributed to the uncertainties in the geometrical parameters of these galaxies. There is evidence for a flattening of the radial abundance gradient in the central part of 18 galaxies. We also estimated the geometric parameters (coordinates of the centre, the galaxy inclination and the position angle of the major axis) of our galaxies from the analysis of the abundance map. The photometry-map-based and the abundance-map-based geometrical parameters are relatively close to each other for the majority of the galaxies but the discrepancy is large for a few galaxies with a flat radial abundance gradient.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/853/151
- Title:
- Oxygen abundances for giant HII regions in NGC 2403
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/853/151
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- This paper presents a spectroscopic investigation of 11 HII regions in the nearby galaxy NGC 2403. The HII regions are observed with a long-slit spectrograph mounted on the 2.16m telescope at XingLong station of National Astronomical Observatories of China. For each of the HII regions, spectra are extracted at different nebular radii along the slit-coverage. Oxygen abundances are empirically estimated from the strong-line indices R23, N2O2, O3N2, and N2 for each spectrophotometric unit, with both observation- and model-based calibrations adopted into the derivation. Radial profiles of these diversely estimated abundances are drawn for each nebula. In the results, the oxygen abundances separately estimated with the prescriptions on the basis of observations and models, albeit from the same spectral index, systematically deviate from each other; at the same time, the spectral indices R23 and N2O2 are distributed with flat profiles, whereas N2 and O3N2 exhibit apparent gradients with the nebular radius. Because our study naturally samples various ionization levels, which inherently decline at larger radii within individual HII regions, the radial distributions indicate not only the robustness of R23 and N2O2 against ionization variations but also the sensitivity of N2 and O3N2 to the ionization parameter. The results in this paper provide observational corroboration of the theoretical prediction about the deviation in the empirical abundance diagnostics. Our future work is planned to investigate metal-poor HII regions with measurable Te, in an attempt to recalibrate the strong-line indices and consequently disclose the cause of the discrepancies between the empirical oxygen abundances.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/735/71
- Title:
- Oxygen abundances in outlying HII regions
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/735/71
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present a search for outlying HII regions in the extended gaseous outskirts of nearby (D<40Mpc) galaxies and subsequent multi-slit spectroscopy used to obtain the HII region nebular oxygen abundances. The galaxies in our sample have extended HI disks and/or interaction-related HI features that extend well beyond their primary stellar components. We report oxygen abundance gradients out to 2.5 times the optical radius for these galaxies which span a range of morphologies and masses. We analyze the underlying stellar and neutral HI gas distributions in the vicinity of the HII regions to understand the physical processes that give rise to the observed metal distributions in galaxies. These measurements, for the first time, convincingly show flat abundance distributions out to large radii in a wide variety of systems and have broad implications for galaxy chemodynamical evolution.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/MNRAS/361/1063
- Title:
- Oxygen abundances of HII regions
- Short Name:
- J/MNRAS/361/1063
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present a new analysis of the main empirical calibrators of oxygen abundance for ionised gas nebulae. With that aim we have compiled an extensive sample of objects with emission line data including the near IR [SIII] lines and the weak auroral lines which allow for the determination of the gas electron temperature. For all the objects the oxygen abundances have been derived in a homogeneous way, using the most recent sets of atomic coefficients and taking into the account the effect of particle density on the temperature of O^+^. The residuals between directly and empirically-derived abundances as a function of abundance have been studied. A grid of photo-ionisation models, covering the range of physical properties of the gas, has been used to explain the origin of the uncertainties affecting each abundance calibrator. The range of validity for each abundance parameter has been identified and its average uncertainty has been quantified.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/772/27
- Title:
- Pa{alpha} (1.87um) LF of HII regions in 12 galaxies
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/772/27
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The H II region luminosity function (LF) is an important tool for deriving the birthrates and mass distribution of OB associations and is an excellent tracer of the newly formed massive stars and associations. To date, extensive work (predominantly in H{alpha}) has been done from the ground, which is hindered by dust extinction and the severe blending of adjacent (spatially or in projection) H II regions. Reliably measuring the properties of H II regions requires a linear resolution <40pc, but analyses satisfying this requirement have been done only in a handful of galaxies, so far. As the first space-based work using a galaxy sample, we have selected 12 galaxies from our HST/NICMOS Pa{alpha} survey and studied the LF and size distribution of H II regions both in individual galaxies and cumulatively, using a virtually extinction-free tracer of the ionizing photon rate. The high angular resolution and low sensitivity to diffuse emission of NICMOS also offer an advantage over ground-based imaging by enabling a higher degree of de-blending of the H II regions. We do not confirm the broken power-law LFs found in ground-based studies. Instead, we find that the LFs, both individual and co-added, follow a single power law dN(L)/dlnL{propto}L^-1^, are consistent with the mass function of star clusters in nearby galaxies, and are in agreement with the results of the existing analyses with Hubble Space Telescope (HST) data. The individual and co-added size distributions of H II regions are both roughly consistent with dN(D)/dlnD{propto}D^-3^, but the power-law scaling is probably contaminated by blended regions or complexes.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/MNRAS/431/2006
- Title:
- PAH in extragalactic star-forming complexes
- Short Name:
- J/MNRAS/431/2006
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The abundance of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in low- and high-metallicity galaxies has been widely discussed since the time when detailed infrared data for extragalactic objects were first obtained. On the scales of entire galaxies, a smaller PAH abundance in lower metallicity galaxies is often observed. We study this relationship for star-forming regions in nearby galaxies, for a sample containing more than 200 HII complexes, using spatially resolved observations from the Herschel Space Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope. We use a model for the dust emission to estimate the physical parameters (PAH abundance, metallicity, ultraviolet radiation field, etc.) of these complexes. The same correlation of PAH abundance with metallicity, as seen for entire galaxies, is apparently preserved at smaller scales, at least when the Kobulnicky and Kewley metallicity calibration is used. We discuss possible reasons for this correlation, noting that traces of less effective PAH formation in low-metallicity asymptotic giant branch stars should be smeared out by radial mixing in galactic discs. Effective destruction by the harder and more intensive ultraviolet field in low-metallicity environments is qualitatively consistent with our data, as the ultraviolet field intensity, derived from the infrared photometry, is indeed smaller in HII complexes with lower metallicity.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/658/A188
- Title:
- PHANGS-MUSE sample HII regions catalog
- Short Name:
- J/A+A/658/A188
- Date:
- 02 Mar 2022 06:10:18
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We use an unprecedented sample of about 23000 HII regions detected at an average physical resolution of 67pc in the PHANGS-MUSE sample to study the extragalactic HII region H{alpha} luminosity function (LF). Our observations probe the star-forming disk of 19 nearby spiral galaxies with low inclination and located close to the star formation main sequence at z=0. The mean LF slope in our sample is =1.73 with a {sigma} of 0.15. We find that {alpha} decreases with the galaxy's star formation rate surface density {SIGMA}_SFR_ and argue that this is driven by an enhanced clustering of young stars at high gas surface densities. Looking at the HII regions within single galaxies we find that no significant variations occur between the LF of the inner and outer part of the star-forming disk, whereas the LF in the spiral arm areas is shallower than in the inter-arm areas for six out of the 13 galaxies with clearly visible spiral arms. We attribute these variations to the spiral arms increasing the molecular clouds arm-inter-arm mass contrast and find suggestive evidence that they are more evident for galaxies with stronger spiral arms. Furthermore, we find systematic variations in {alpha} between samples of HII regions with high and low ionization parameter q and argue that they are driven by the aging of HII regions.
