English

The Magellanic Clouds and the Primordial Helium Abundance

Astrophysics 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

A new determination of the pregalactic helium abundance based on the Magellanic Clouds H II regions is discussed. This determination amounts to Yp = 0.2345 +- 0.0030 and is compared with those derived from giant extragalactic H II regions in systems with extremely low heavy elements content. It is suggested that the higher primordial value derived by other authors from giant H II region complexes could be due to two systematic effects: the presence of neutral hydrogen inside the helium Stromgren sphere and the presence of temperature variations inside the observed volume.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0002120,
  title  = {The Magellanic Clouds and the Primordial Helium Abundance},
  author = {Manuel Peimbert Antonio Peimbert},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0002120},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

10 pages, 1 figure, IAU Symposium 198