Bibcode
Esteban, C.; García-Rojas, J.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 478, Issue 2, p.2315-2336
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8
2018
Citations
71
Refereed citations
58
Description
We present spectra obtained with the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias
telescope of 13 Galactic H II regions, most of them of very low
ionization degree. The objects are located along the Galactic disc, with
RG from 5.7 to 16.1 kpc. We determine Te([N II])
for all of them. We obtain - for the first time - a radial abundance
gradient of N that is independent on the ionization correction factor.
The radial distribution of the N/O ratio is almost flat, indicating that
the bulk of N is not formed by standard secondary processes. We have
made a reassessment of the radial O abundance gradient combining our
results with previous similar ones by Esteban et al. producing a
homogeneous data set of 35 H II regions with direct determinations of
the electron temperature. We report the possible presence of a
flattening or drop of the O abundance in the inner part of the Galactic
disc. This result confirms previous findings from metallicity
distributions based on Cepheids and red giants. Finally, we find that
the scatter of the N and O abundances of H II regions with respect to
the gradient fittings is not substantially larger than the observational
uncertainties, indicating that both chemical elements seem to be well
mixed in the interstellar gas at a given distance along the Galactic
disc
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