Related papers: VLT observations of the highly ionized nebula arou…
We present the very first high quality images of the HeII 4686 emission in three high excitation nebulae of the Magellanic Clouds. A fourth high excitation nebula, situated around the WR star BAT99-2, was analysed in a previous letter.…
New integral field spectroscopy has been obtained for IZw18, the nearby lowest-metallicity galaxy considered our best local analog of systems forming at high-z. Here we report the spatially resolved spectral map of the nebular HeII4686…
We report on the detection of a previously unknown extended low-density nebula of very high temperature and excitation, TR001507.7-391206, located above the midplane of NGC55. The nebular emission line spectrum, in which HeII is present, is…
We present a high S/N spectrum for the quasar PG 1138+222. We detect a very broad HeII$\lambda$4686 emission line component with twice the FWHM of the conventional broad line region (BLR) as evidenced by the Balmer lines. The profile shape…
We report the discovery of [NeV]3426 emission, in addition to HeII4686 emission, in six compact star-forming galaxies. These observations considerably increase the sample of eight such galaxies discovered earlier by our group. For four of…
The nebular He II {\lambda}1640 emission line is observed in star forming galaxies out to large distances and can be used to constrain the properties of sources of He+ ionizing photons. For this purpose, it is crucial to understand which…
We review the observations of nebular HeII 4686 emission in Local Group objects and extra-galactic HII regions. Different ionization mechanisms proposed to explain the unusually high excitation are summarized. The models of Schaerer (1996)…
We have discovered a ~45 kpc Lya nebula (or Lya ``blob'') at z~1.67 which exhibits strong, spatially-extended HeII emission and very weak CIV and CIII] emission. This is the first spatially-extended Lya+HeII emitter observed and the lowest…
We present Hubble Space Telescope images of the He{\sc iii} region surrounding the bright X-ray source in the dwarf irregular galaxy Holmberg II. Using {\it Chandra}, we find a position for the X-ray source of $\alpha=$ 08h 19m 28.98s,…
Using a sample of unprecedented size (about 400 objects) of H II galaxies in which the oxygen abundances have been obtained using the temperature derived from the [OIII] 4363/5007 line ratio, we confirm that the H II galaxies form a very…
With a projected size of about 450 kpc at z~2.3, the Slug Ly-alpha nebula is a rare laboratory to study, in emission, the properties of the intergalactic gas in the Cosmic Web. Since its discovery, the Slug has been the subject of several…
We present the results of deep optical spectroscopic observations using the LRIS spectrograph on the Keck I 10-m telescope of three ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs), Ho IX X-1; M81 X-6; and Ho II X-1. Our observations reveal the…
A high quality, medium-resolution K-band spectrum has been obtained of the ultracompact HII region G29.96-0.02 with the Very Large Telescope (VLT). The slit was positioned along the symmetry axis of the cometary shaped nebula. Besides the…
We present HST spectroscopy and imaging, along with new ground-based spectroscopy and ROSAT HRI imaging, of the He II emitting nebula N44C and its ionizing star. A GHRS spectrogram of the ionizing star yields a spectral type of about O7 for…
We here report the detection of extended HeII4686 nebular emission in the central region of NGC1569 using the integral field spectrograph MEGARA at the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias. The observations cover a Field of View (FoV) of 12.5…
We present a sample of 2865 emission line galaxies with strong nebular He II 4686 emissions in Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 and use this sample to investigate the origin of this line in star-forming galaxies. We show that…
SBS0335-052E, one of the most metal-poor (Z ~ 3-4% Z$_{\odot}$) HeII-emitter starbursts known in the nearby universe, is studied using optical VLT/MUSE spectroscopic and Chandra X-ray observations. We spatially resolved the spectral map of…
The SMC harbours a class of hot nitrogen-sequence Wolf-Rayet stars (WNE) that display only relatively weak broad emission lines. This indicates low mass-loss rates and makes them also hard to detect. However, such stars are possible…
We report the detection of the emission line He II 4686 A in eta Carinae. The equivalent width of this line is ~100 mA along most of the 5.5-yr cycle and jumps to ~900 mA just before phase 1.0, followed by a brief disappearance. The…
I Zw 18 is the most metal poor star-forming galaxy known and is an ideal laboratory to probe stellar evolution theory at low metallicities. Using archival HST WFPC2 imaging and FOS spectroscopy we were able to improve previous studies. We…