The electron temperatures of HII regions S 201, S 206 and S 209: Multi-frequency GMRT observations

Abstract

Three Galactic HII regions, viz., S 201, S 206, and S 209 have been imaged at three frequencies, viz., 232, 327, and 610 MHz using the GMRT. The resolutions of these images are typically 15" at 232, 10" at 327, and 6" at 610 MHz. These are the highest resolution low frequency images of these HII regions. We found that all three HII regions have core--envelope morphologies. We use the high resolution afforded by the data to estimate the electron temperatures of the compact cores of these HII regions. These estimates of the electron temperatures are consistent with an increase in the temperature with Galacto-centric distance; an effect attributed to a decrease in the heavy elements abundances at large Galacto-centric distances.