Software for the Analysis of Emission Line Nebulae

Abstract

A set of software tools has been developed for the IRAF/STSDAS environment to derive the physical conditions in a low-density (nebular) gas given appropriate diagnostic emission line ratios; and line emissivities given appropriate emission line fluxes, the electron temperature (T e ) and density (N e ). The package is based on the five-level atom program developed by De Robertis, Dufour and Hunt (1987), but it includes diagnostics from a greater set of ions and emission lines, most particularly those in the satellite ultraviolet that are now observable. Two of the applications make use of a 3-zone nebular model to derive T e and N e simultaneously in separate zones of low-, intermediate-, and high-ionization. These applications are useful for calculating nebular densities and temperatures directly from the traditional diagnostic line ratios, either to provide some reasonable input parameters for a more complicated physical model, or to calculate ionic abundances (or other quantities) w..