Bibcode
Rozas, M.; Richer, M. G.; López, J. A.; Relaño, M.; Beckman, J. E.
Bibliographical reference
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 455, Issue 2, August IV 2006, pp.539-547
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8
2006
Journal
Citations
24
Refereed citations
24
Description
We present an analysis of the Hα emission line profiles of a
sample of giant extragalactic HII regions, selected from among the
brightest and most isolated in a group of spiral galaxies for which we
have photometric and spectroscopic data: NGC 157, NGC 3631, NGC 6764,
NGC 3344, NGC 4321, NGC 5364, NGC 5055, NGC 5985, NGC 7479. Our study
confirms that the majority of the line profiles are composed of a
bright, main component and two fainter, high velocity components that we
denominate wings. Here, we analyze the kinematics of the principal
components, finding a relation between the Hα luminosity,
L_Hα, and the turbulent velocity dispersion, σ_nt. A linear
fit to the relation between these quantities yields log L_Hα =
(35.6 ± 0.4) + (2.87 ± 0.2)log σ_nt, in agreement
with previous studies. We compute the mass of each HII region using both
the virial theorem and the Hα luminosity, confirming that, though
these estimates do not coincide exactly, they are comparable within the
uncertainties and consequently that the HII regions in our sample are
approximately virialized.