Integral Field Spectroscopy of HII region complexes. The outer disk of NGC 6946

Abstract

Integral Field Spectroscopy obtained with PPak and the 3.5m telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory has been used to study an outer HII region complex in the well studied galaxy NGC 6946. This technique provides detailed maps of the region in different emission lines yielding spatially resolved information about the physical properties of the gas. The configuration was chosen to cover the whole spectrum from 3600 up to 10000 A. We selected four luminous knots, to perform a detailed integrated spectroscopic analysis of these structures and of the whole PPak field-of-view (FOV). For all the knots the electron density has been found to be very similar and below 100 cm^-3. The [OIII] electron temperature was measured in knots A, B, C and in the integrated PPak-field, and was found to be around 8000 K. The temperatures of [OII] and [SIII] were estimated in the four cases. The elemental abundances computed from the "direct method" are typical of high metallicity disk HII regions, with a mean value of 12+log(O/H)= 8.65, comparable to what has been found in this galaxy by other authors for regions at similar galactocentric distance. Therefore, a remarkable abundance uniformity is found despite the different excitations found throughout the nebula. Wolf-Rayet features have been detected in three of the knots, leading to a derived total number of WR stars of 125, 22 and 5, for knots A, C and B, respectively. The integrated spectrum of the whole PPak FOV shows high excitation and a relatively evolved age which does not correspond to the individual knot evolutionary stages. Some effects associated to the loss of spatial resolution could also be evidenced by the higher ionising temperature that is deduced from the eta' parameter measured in the integrated PPak spectrum with respect to that of the individual knots.

24 pages, 15 figures and 9 tables; accepted for publication in MNRAS; shortened abstract

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