English

Chemistry in the dIrr galaxy Leo A

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2018-08-29 v1

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+2^{+2} ionic abundance was calculated using an electronic temperature determined from the [O III] λλ\lambda\lambda4363/5007 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)=7.4±\pm0.2, 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_\odot.

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