Issue |
A&A
Volume 622, February 2019
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A119 | |
Number of page(s) | 42 | |
Section | Interstellar and circumstellar matter | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201833776 | |
Published online | 07 February 2019 |
Modeling ionized gas in low-metallicity environments: the Local Group dwarf galaxy IC 10★
1
Laboratoire AIM, CEA/Service d’Astrophysique, Bât. 709, CEA-Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France
e-mail: fiorella.polles@obspm.fr
2
Université Paris Sud, 91400 Orsay, France
3
LERMA, Observatoire de Paris, CNRS, PSL University, Sorbonne University, 75014 Paris, France
4
University of Cincinnati, Clermont College, 4200 Clermont College Drive, Batavia, OH 45103, USA
5
Institut für theoretische Astrophysik, Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg, Albert-Ueberle Str.2, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
6
Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Auf dem Hügel 69, 53121 Bonn, Germany
7
Astronomisches Rechen-Institut, Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg, Mönchhofstraße 12-14, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
Received:
4
July
2018
Accepted:
18
September
2018
Context. Star formation activity is an important driver of galaxy evolution and is influenced by the physical properties of the interstellar medium. Dwarf galaxies allow us to understand how the propagation of radiation and the physical conditions of the different ISM phases are affected by the low-metallicity environment.
Aims. Our objective is to investigate the physical properties of the ionized gas of the low-metallicity dwarf galaxy, IC 10, at various spatial scales: from individual H II regions to the entire galaxy scale and examine whether diagnostics for integrated measurements introduce bias in the results.
Methods. We modeled the ionized gas combining the mid- and far-infrared fine-structure cooling lines observed with Spitzer/IRS and Herschel/PACS, with the photoionization code CLOUDY. The free parameters of the models are the age of the stellar cluster, the density, and the ionization parameter of the ionized gas as well as the depth of the cloud. The latter is used to investigate the leakage of the ionizing photons from the analyzed regions of IC 10. We investigated H II regions in the main star-forming body, on scales of ~25 pc, three in the main star-forming region in the center of the galaxy and two on the first arc. We then considered larger sizes on the scale of ~200 pc.
Results. Most clumps have almost-identical properties, density ~102–102.6 cm−3, ionization parameter between 10−2.2 and 10−1.6, and age of the stellar cluster ~5.5 Myr. All of them are matter-bounded regions, allowing ionizing photons to leak. The relatively uniform physical properties of the clumps suggest a common origin for their star formation activity, which could be related to the feedback from stellar winds or supernovae of a previous generation of stars. The properties derived for ~200 pc size “zones” have similar properties as the H II regions they encompass, but with the larger regions tending to be more radiation bounded. Finally, we investigated the fraction of [CII] 157.7 μm, [SiII] 34.8 μm and [FeII] 25.9 μm emission arising from the ionized gas phase and we find that most of the emission originates from the neutral gas, not from the ionized gas.
Key words: HII regions / ISM: lines and bands / galaxies: ISM / galaxies: individual: IC 10 / techniques: spectroscopic
The reduced images and spectra are only available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?J/A+A/622/A119
© ESO 2019
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.