HST observations of carbon in spiral galaxies

DOI

We present measurements of the gas-phase abundance ratio C/O in six H II regions in the spiral galaxies M101 and NGC 2403, based on ultraviolet spectroscopy using the Faint Object Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope. The ratios of C to O increase systematically with O/H in both galaxies, from log(C/O){~=}-0.8 at log(O/H){~=}-4.0 to log(C/O){~=}-0.1 at log(O/H){~=}-3.4. C/N shows no correlation with O/H. The rate of increase of C/O is somewhat uncertain because of uncertainty as to the appropriate UV reddening law and uncertainty in the metallicity dependence on grain depletions. However, the trend of increasing C/O with O/H is clear, confirming and extending the trend in C/O indicated previously from observations of irregular galaxies. Our data indicate that the radial gradients in C/H across spiral galaxies are steeper than the gradients in O/H. Comparing the data to chemical-evolution models for spiral galaxies shows that models in which the massive star yields do not vary with metallicity predict radial C/O gradients that are much flatter than the observed gradients.

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.15130168
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/513/168
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/513/168
Related Identifier http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/513/168
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/513/168
Provenance
Creator Garnett D.R.; Shields G.A.; Peimbert M.; Torres-Peimbert S.; SkillmanE.D.; Dufour R.J.; Terlevich E.; Terlevich R.J.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2000
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Galactic and extragalactic Astronomy; Interdisciplinary Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics