The Continuum Structure of 11 Galactic H II Regions

As a consequence of a program to determine the abundance of ³He in the interstellar medium, the continuum structure of 11 Galactic H II regions is investigated using radio observations at 8.7 GHz using the VLA and the MPIR 100 m telescope. Accurate ³He abundance determinations require models for the source structure. The VLA data probe the compact structures, while the 100 m telescope data measure extended emission not detected by the VLA. In this analysis we characterize H II region structure as being composed of a core-halo geometry. Core properties are derived from the VLA continuum maps, while the halo parameters are set by the 100 m data. For many sources multiple cores are observed. Three models are derived for each H II region. The first two models are based on a particular component geometry: a homogeneous sphere and a spherical Gaussian, respectively. The third model uses peak properties in the continuum intensity map to derive various physical parameters. A comparison between the three models shows no systematic differences in the derived electron density and emission measure for the individual components. Overall, the scatter between modeled parameters is 15%.