Effects of the temperature structure on the derivation of abundances in HII galaxies

G.F. HÄGELE, E. PÉREZ-MONTERO, A.I. DÍAZ, E. TERLEVICH AND R. TERLEVICH

Venecia

Congreso; From Stars to Galaxies: Building the pieces to build up the Universe; 2006

Universidad de Padova

We propose a methodology to perform a self-consistent analysis of the physical properties of the nebular material of HII galaxies adequate to the data that can be obtained with the XXI century technology. This methodology requires the production and calibration of empirical relations between the different line temperatures that should supersede the currently used ones based on very simple, and poorly tested, photo-ionisation model sequences. The analysis of spectroscopic data covering from 3500 to 10500 Å allowing a careful and realistic treatment of the observational errors yields total oxygen abundances with accuracies between 5 and 9%. These accuracies are expected to improve as better calibrations based on more precise measurements, both on electron temperatures and densities, are produced.