A reappraisal of the chemical composition of the Orion nebula based on Very Large Telescope echelle spectrophotometry

By C. Esteban, M. Peimbert, J. García-Rojas, M. Ruiz, A. Peimbert, Mónica I. Rodríguez. 2004

236 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present Very Large Telescope (VLT) UVES echelle spectrophotometry of the Orion nebula in the 3100-10 400 A range. We have measured the intensity of 555 emission lines, many of them corresponding to permitted lines of different heavy-element ions. This is the largest set of spectral emission lines ever obtained for a Galactic or extragalactic H II region. We have derived He + , C 2+ , O + , O 2+ and Ne 2+ abundances from pure recombination lines. This is the first time that O + and Ne 2+ abundances have been obtained from these kinds of lines in the nebula. We have also derived abundances from collisionally excited lines for a large number of ions of different elements. In all cases, ionic abundances obtained from recombination lines are larger than those derived from collisionally excited lines. We have obtained remarkably consistent independent estimations of the temperature fluctuation parameter, t 2 , from different methods, which are also similar to other estimates from the literature. This result strongly suggests that moderate temperature fluctuations (t 2 between 0.02 and 0.03) are present in the Orion nebula. We have compared the chemical composition of the nebula with those of the Sun and other representative objects. The heavy-element abundances in the Orion nebula are only slightly higher than the solar ones, a difference that can be explained by the chemical evolution of the solar neighbourhood.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atmospheric Science, Spectroscopy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/00870348e0587cd0ac8690ef39312222f8aa74f7

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Citations in the corpus

STRONG NEBULAR LINE RATIOS IN THE SPECTRA of z ∼ 2–3 STAR FORMING GALAXIES: FIRST RESULTS FROM KBSS-MOSFIRE (2014, background): “…(2009), as well as with 26 In addition to the behavior of (N/O) vs. (O/H), another common assumption in photoionization models is that gas-phase N and O are depleted by amounts similar to those observed in Galactic H II regions (e.g., Esteban et al. 2004), typically ' 0.07 − 0.09 dex for each.”
Ultraviolet emission lines in young low-mass galaxies at z ≃ 2: physical properties and implications for studies at z > 7 (2014, result): “…poor dwarf star forming galaxies in our sample are much lower than the solar C/O ratio (log C/O = −0.26) and the C/O ratio in Orion (log C/O = −0.21; Esteban et al. 2004) but are similar to those of other metal poor high redshift galaxies (e.g., Erb et al. 2010, Christensen et al. 2012b, James et…”
New fully empirical calibrations of strong-line metallicity indicators in star forming galaxies (2016, background): “In fact, many others features from the same ion are clearly observable both in the same (e.g. [Fe ii] λ4288) and in different spectral windows; this particular emission have been reported also in studies on the Orion nebula (see e.g. Table 2 of Esteban et al. (2004)).”
KECK HIRES SPECTROSCOPY OF EXTRAGALACTIC H ii REGIONS: C AND O ABUNDANCES FROM RECOMBINATION LINES (2009, background): “…Nebula and not in other similar spectra (taken with the same instrument and with the same exposure time) of the central parts of the nebula (see Esteban et al. 2004), suggests that the Ca i] emission should be produced in the ionization edge of the EHRs observed in this paper, perhaps due to a…”
OPTICAL SPECTROSCOPY AND NEBULAR OXYGEN ABUNDANCES OF THE SPITZER/SINGS GALAXIES (2010, methodology): “For example, using the direct method Esteban et al. (2004) measured the oxygen abundance of the Orion nebula to be 12 + log (O/H) = 8.51 ± 0.03.”
Eliminating error in the chemical abundance scale for extragalactic H ii regions (2012, methodology): “Hence, the total argon abundance was calculated by considering the ICFs proposed by Izotov et al. (1994).”
A Cosmic Abundance Standard: Chemical Homogeneity of the Solar Neighborhood and the ISM Dust-Phase Composition (2008, result): “Excellent agreement is also obtained with elemental abundances in the Orion nebula (Esteban et al. 2004, E04, see Table 2), with the exception of C, which may be a consequence of the atomic data used in the Orion analysis (see NP08 for the stellar case) plus overestimated dust corrections.”
NEW STRONG-LINE ABUNDANCE DIAGNOSTICS FOR H ii REGIONS: EFFECTS OF κ-DISTRIBUTED ELECTRON ENERGIES AND NEW ATOMIC DATA (2013, unknown): “Galactic H ii regions from M42 (Esteban et al. 2004), NGC 3576 (Garcı́a-Rojas et al. 2005a), S311 (Garcı́a-Rojas et al. 2005b), M20 & NGC 3602 (Garcı́a-Rojas & Esteban 2006), and M8 & M17 (Garcı́a-Rojas & Esteban 2007).”
EXTRAGALACTIC CHEMICAL ABUNDANCES: DO H ii REGIONS AND YOUNG STARS TELL THE SAME STORY? THE CASE OF THE SPIRAL GALAXY NGC 300 (2009, background): “Taking the composition of the diffuse clouds in the solar neighborhood and the collisionally excited line result for the Orion nebula from Esteban et al. (2004) would suggest a depletion factor of approximately −0.1 dex.”
THE THREE-PHASE INTERSTELLAR MEDIUM REVISITED (2005, background): “The abundance of oxygen relative to hydrogen is AO = 5.6 × 10−4 (Esteban et al. 2004, 2005).”
Present-day cosmic abundances - A comprehensive study of nearby early B-type stars and implications for stellar and Galactic evolution and interstellar dust models (2012, methodology): “A comparison of the CAS with gas-phase abundances (Esteban et al. 2004; Simón-Dı́az & Stasińska 2011) implies that the Hii region is devoid of carbonaceous dust.”
Metallicity Calibrations and the Mass-Metallicity Relation for Star-forming Galaxies (2008, background): “These investigations include tailored photoionization models, high S/N spectroscopy of luminous stars in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, metal recombination lines, IR fine structure lines, and temperature fluctuation studies.”
The chemical composition of the Sun (2009, methodology): “Our recommended solar abundances agree very well in general with those measured in nearby OB stars, H ii regions like Orion and the local ISM (Sect.”