UNTANGLING THE RECOMBINATION LINE EMISSION FROM H ii REGIONS WITH MULTIPLE VELOCITY COMPONENTS

• Published in: The Astrophysical journal Vol. 810; no. 1; pp. 1 - 14
• Main Authors: Anderson, L. D., Hough, L. A., Wenger, TREY V., Bania, T. M., Balser, Dana S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United Kingdom The American Astronomical Society 01.09.2015
• Subjects: Ambiguity; ASTROPHYSICS, COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY; CARBON; DISTANCE; ELECTRON TEMPERATURE; EMISSION; Galactic structure; GALAXIES; Galaxy: structure; H II regions; H2 REGIONS; HII regions; HYDROGEN; infrared: ISM; LUMINOSITY; MASS; Massive stars; Radio; RECOMBINATION; STARS; stars: formation; TELESCOPES; VELOCITY
• ISSN: 0004-637X; 1538-4357; 1538-4357
• DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/810/1/42

ABSTRACT H ii regions are the ionized spheres surrounding high-mass stars. They are ideal targets for tracing Galactic structure because they are predominantly found in spiral arms and have high luminosities at infrared and radio wavelengths. In the Green Bank Telescope H ii Region Discovery Survey (GBT HRDS), we found that of first Galactic quadrant H ii regions have multiple hydrogen radio recombination line (RRL) velocities, which makes determining their Galactic locations and physical properties impossible. Here we make additional GBT RRL observations to determine the discrete H ii region velocity for all 117 multiple-velocity sources within . The multiple-velocity sources are concentrated in the zone , coinciding with the largest regions of massive star formation, which implies that the diffuse emission is caused by leaked ionizing photons. We combine our observations with analyses of the electron temperature, molecular gas, and carbon recombination lines to determine the source velocities for 103 discrete H ii regions ( of the sample). With the source velocities known, we resolve the kinematic distance ambiguity for 47 regions, and thus determine their heliocentric distances.