LUMINOUS H II REGIONS IN NGC 4410A


Here is a closer view of NGC 4410A+B. The left image is a red continuum image, the right image is an H-alpha+NII image. The field of view is about 0.8 arcminutes X 1.1 arcminutes. These images were obtained with the 2.1m telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.

NGC 4410A, the galaxy on the right in these images, is classified as Sab ? Pec by de Vaucouleurs et al. (1993). It has a prominent bulge surrounded by a ring-like or loop-like structure. Optical spectroscopy (Donahue et al. 2000) confirms that the bright clumps in the ring and the extremely bright knot southeast of the NGC 4410A nucleus are H II regions. These H II regions have observed H-alpha luminosities between 1040 - 1041 solar luminosities. The most luminous H II region is nine times more luminous than 30 Doradus, and is more luminous than any H II region complex in the nearby spiral and irregular galaxies surveyed by Kennicutt et al. (1989).