Chemistry in the dIrr galaxy Leo A
Abstract
We present chemical abundance determinations of two H II regions in the dIrr galaxy Leo A, from GTC OSIRIS long-slit spectra. Both H II regions are of low excitation and seem to be ionised by stars later than O8V spectral type. In one of the H II regions we used the direct method: O ionic abundance was calculated using an electronic temperature determined from the [O III] 4363/5007 line ratio; ionic abundances of O, N, and S were calculated using a temperature derived from a parameterised formula. O, N and S total abundances were calculated using Ionisation Correction Factors from the literature for each element. Chemical abundances using strong-line methods were also determined, with similar results. For the second H II region, no electron temperature was determined thus the direct method cannot be used. We computed photoionisation structure models for both H II regions in order to determine their chemical composition from the best-fitted models. It is confirmed that Leo A in a very low metallicity galaxy, with 12+log(O/H)=7.40.2, log(N/O)=1.6, and log(S/O)=1.1. Emission lines of the only PN detected in Leo A were reanalysed and a photoionisation model was computed. This PN shows 12+log(O/H) very similar to the ones of the H II regions and a low N abundance, although its log(N/O) ratio is much larger than the values of the H II regions. Its central star seems to have had an initial mass lower than 2 M.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1808.06027,
title = {Chemistry in the dIrr galaxy Leo A},
author = {Francisco Ruiz-Escobedo and Miriam Peña and Liliana Hernández-Martínez and Jorge García-Rojas},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.06027},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
Accepted in MNRAS