2009/01/16 by G. F. Hägele, G. F. Hagele, Á. I. Díaz +12
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #Atomic and Molecular Physics #FOS: Physical sciences #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0901.2465
6 pages, proceedings to "Star-forming Dwarf Galaxies: Ariadne's Thread in the Cosmic Labyrinth", Crete, 2008
arxiv created 2009/01/16 · openalex publication_date 2009/01/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We propose a methodology to perform a self-consistent analysis of the physical properties of the emitting gas of HII galaxies adequate to the data that can be obtained with the XXI century technology. This methodology requires the production and calibration of empirical relations between the different line temperatures that should superseed currently used ones based on very simple, and poorly tested, photo-ionization model sequences. Then, these observations are analysed applying a methodology designed to obtain accurate elemental abundances of oxygen, sulphur, nitrogen, neon, argon and iron in the ionsied gas. Four electron temperatures and one electron density are derived from the observed forbidden line ratios using the five-level atom approximation. For our best objects errors of 1% in T([OIII]), 3% in T([OII]) and 5% in T([SIII]) are achieved with a resulting accuracy between 5 and 9% in total oxygen abundances, O/H. These accuracies are expected to improve as better calibrations based on more precise measurements, both on electron temperatures and densities, are produced.