The Metal Abundances of Circumnuclear Star Forming Regions in Early Type Spirals

TERLEVICH, E.; DÍAZ, A. I.; HÄGELE, G. F.; CASTELLANOS, M.

Praga

Simposio; Galaxy Evolution Across the Hubble Time, IAU Symp. #235; 2006

Instituto de Astrofísica de la República Checa y la International Astronomical Union

We present a spectrophotometric study of circumnuclear star forming regions (CNSFR) in the galaxies: NGC 2903, NGC 3351 and NGC 3504, all of them of over solar metallicity according to standard empirical calibrations. A detailed determination of their abundances is made after careful subtraction of the prominent underlying stellar absorption. It is found that most regions show the highest abundances in HII region-like objects. It is also shown that CNSFR, as a class, segregate from the disk HII region family, clustering around smaller ’ values, and therefore higher ionizing temperatures.