Beckman, J. E.; Relaño, Mónica
Bibliographical reference
Astrophysics and Space Science, v. 292, Issue 1, p. 111-118 (2004).
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8
2004
Journal
Citations
7
Refereed citations
5
Description
We describe a set of Hα emission line profiles from populations of
H II regions in nearby spiral galaxies. These are characterized by a
strong Gaussian central peak, and lower intensity higher velocity wing
features. From the peak we extract a non-thermal velocity component, due
to the internal turbulence of the region. The plot of the widths of
these non-thermal components against Hα luminosity shows a lower
envelope in line width, which we assign to regions in, or close to
virial equilibrium, although the region mass derived on this assumption
is higher than the mass obtained by summing all known mass components.
We speculate that this discrepancy, as well as the supersonicity of the
line widths, can be explained by the presence of turbulent magnetic
fields within the H II regions, and make a very rough estimate of the
fields implied, of order a few tens of microgauss.