Talk:H II region

HII and forbidden lines
I added the missing link between the 500 nm forbidden OIII line (emitted by oxygen of which there is virtually none in a HII region) and the actual normal H-alpha glow of the HII region. So, the solution is: There is no link. H-alpha is not a forbiddedn line. Still I did not delete the OIII-stuff. It is at maximum of some historical interest, however - and may confuse the casual reader.

Best regards, --Trinitrix (talk) 20:13, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Forbidden lines
Would "forbidden lines" be the same as "absorption lines"? I here that term a lot when speaking of stellar spectra, but I've never heard them called "forbidden". -- John Owens 15:08 Apr 7, 2003 (UTC)
 * "forbidden lines" can be of the absorption or emission kind (rules are the same), these lines corresponds to energy transitions which should never occurs (forbidden by the transition rules, generaly because of symmetry reasons), but which, nevertheless, occurs (usually at a very lower intensity) when taking into account all the interactions (causing a small symetry breaking/split of an energy level/...). For example, for infrared lines, collisions between molecules induces small distorsions, which reduce the symmetry, which make possible some transitions otherwise forbidden in the full symmetric case. Need an article of course. -- looxix 17:47 Apr 7, 2003 (UTC)
 * OK, now that we've got a forbidden lines article in place, I see what you mean. :) All I knew from the context here was that they weren't emission lines, so I figured they must then be absorption lines. Neat to know about those too, now. -- John Owens 19:04 Apr 7, 2003 (UTC)

Density
Related to density, article says that nebulas have [10 - 10,000,000] particles per cm^3. Could someone explain me to what presure that compares? How many particles per cm3 we have in lab-made vacuum, for instance? saigon_from_europe

"giant H II region"
Am I seeing things or is the "giant H II region" image on the article's top right one of those goatse photoshops?

H II regions as plasma
I restored the text regarding H II regions as plasmas. The following points seem reasonable: --Iantresman 23:30, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
 * H II regions are completely ionized, so by definition, are plasma.
 * All plasmas, by definition, have the characteristic of plasma.
 * Any magnetic field entering a plasma is carried by the plasma, just as the Sun's "open" magnetic field extend to infitinity.
 * I've added a reference to the interstellar medium, and hence H II region having a magenetic field.
 * All magnetic fields in motion produce a current, just as the movement of the interplanetary medium in the Sun's magnetic field produces the heliospheric current sheet.
 * I've added two references to electric currents in the interstellar medium

The term "H II" is not well defined. Even after looking at the references there is no mention of doubly ionized Hydrogen or even that it is the COOLING (recombination) of the gas that causes the visible emission.

HII is singly ionized hydrogen. The notation is [chemical symbol][roman numeral] where roman numeral I indicates that the element is neutral. Keflavich 22:40, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

On another note... how do you get to this page? I can't access it by going to "hii region" or "h ii region" or any other variation. Links work fine though. --Keflavich 23:16, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * A hydrogen atom only has one electron, so "doubly ionzed" hydrogen (H+2) is impossible. As Keflavich says, HI means neutral atomic hydrogen (H - i.e. one proton and one electron), and HI means singly ionized atomic hydrogen (H+ - i.e. a bare proton}.  Molecular hydrogen would be H2.  The article can be lined as H II region (note the capitalisation). -- ALoan (Talk) 10:30, 1 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I was unaware that the search/go function was case sensitive --Keflavich 20:54, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

H II and H2 are not the same thing. H II is a hydrogen atom in which the electron is obiting in the second shell. Ordinary hydrogen has the electron orbiting in the first shell (H I). see Electron shell. 72.204.12.223 (talk) 19:54, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

&amp;nbsp;
I don't see that the &amp;nbsp; scattered throughout the article are needed. I do find that they make the article hard to maintain and would like to see them removed unless there is a compelling reason to include them. I've seen no other articles where they are used like they are here and believe they are not needed here as currently used. My fix for this was reverted by an anonymous user twice claiming that they are needed. WilliamKF 22:13, 5 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It means that, on the page and in print, you won't get H at the end of one line and II at the beginning of the next. It's just good sense to keep them together with nbsps, as having the thing split across lines looks ugly and confusing.  I'm curious as to why your edit summaries did not correspond with what you were actually doing?  Both times you removed all the nbsps, your edit summary claimed to be correcting a spelling (which didn't need correcting in any case).  81.178.208.69 23:35, 5 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The edit summaries are automatically generated by AWB. It wanted to correct spelling of Sargent which I manually undid, however, the edit summary did not know that I had undone its work. WilliamKF 00:04, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Is it not possible to change the edit summary to reflect what's actually happening? I wasn't sure, seeing an identical edit with incorrect summary twice in quick succession, if your software was making a mistake, if you were aware of what it was actually doing, or what.  Do you agree with my reasons why the nbsps should stay?  81.178.208.69 14:41, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


 * You can't directly edit the edit summary from AWB, but instead can pick from a set of choices, I picked 'clean up' which gets appended with the spelling changes which I manually backed out. Agree with keeping the nbsp now that I understand their use.  I hit it twice (and thought Deja-vu, because my search criteria hit upon it twice for two different tasks.)  I notified the AWB maintainers and they have already removed the correction of Sargent since it is a name for the next release of AWB. WilliamKF 17:37, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

stellar nurseries?
I would edit this article in several places to change where the article refers to HII regions being the "birthplaces of stars". This is not really correct.

Molecular clouds are the birthplaces of stars. HII regions are commonly found in parts of molecular clouds, where young massive stars have already formed and are ionizing and blowing away the surrounding cold molecular hydrogen. The gas in the HII region itself, being ionized, will NEVER collapse into a star. If anything, to use the given metaphor, an HII region is part a stellar nursery being systematically destroyed by the first baby to arrive, whatever's within reach of its basinet. A few other babies can hide in their dark corners for a while and continue to grow, but the UV from the massive ones are photo-evaporating the clouds the little ones are trying to collapse in, stopping them in their tracks. That is, the massive stars can interrupt the more slowly collapsing low-mass stars from growing, and actually prevent some of them from ever gaining enough mass to become stars. I saw a paper presented at AAS meeting this year predicting just that occurring in the Eagle Nebula (the famous "pillars of creation"). Myrrhlin 21:40, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I would like to second this. HII are not places where stars form, but places where stars just formed, and I do not think this subtle point is made. Or, another way of saying it is that the massive stars which just formed then create the HII region. Astronomers are often somewhat lazy, I suppose, in making this distinction, the reason being that HII regions are a primary marker of star formation. James McBride (talk) 19:27, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Super star cluster
This page mentions that SSC comes from "Ultra dense H II regions (UDHIIs)", not sure where to add in this page. Thanks, Marasama (talk) 18:34, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

OIII link
The link labeled 'OIII' in the observations section goes to an unrelated page about an airport. I am going to remove it. KleinGordon (talk) 19:27, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Pronounciation
I vote for adding the proper (or usual) pronunciation (which I happen to not know, unfortunately). Is it "eytch-too"? or "High"? or "High-ee"? or something else? The spelling here (H and II separated) suggests the first option, but I've seen HII in other places (also in WP) as well. (Unsigned; by Alfe talk) 15:08, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * H-two, but I don't have a source. Often without space (google for <"HII" astronomy> gets half as many hits as <"H II" astronomy>). Aka H+ regions. Anything with H2 would be "molecular hydrogen" if any chance of confusion with HII. Pol098 (talk) 15:37, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi there. As a student of IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), I assert that it would be an easy solution to use the IPA dictionary for the pronunciation, once it has been cited as correct.  The pronunciations are displayed within brackets, e.g. [ɛ:itʃ-tu] OR in a British dialect [ɛ:itʃ-tju].  Characters are located under Special Characters->IPA. BerretSO4 (talk) 15:21, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * "in a British dialect [ɛ:itʃ-tju]". What? Most British dialects are pretty much the same, not quite the same as the American dialect given, but not like the "British" version above; OED gives [eɪtʃ-tu:] for letter H followed by number two. The only British dialects noticeably different are some Scots variants with /twɔː/. Pol098 (talk) 16:41, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I should have been more specific. Proper British (England) for the number "2" includes a j-glide in IPA.  [tju:] as opposed to [tu].  That was the distinction I was making. You can disregard any other points I implicated unintentionally about the British pronunciation.  Honestly, the point may be moot considering the background of the term we are referring to.  If we had the country of origin it would be easier to figure out how it was originally pronounced.  Specifically on your OED reference, I think it uses the [ɪ] appropriately for some dialects but not all, as the [i] is appropriate for most American English speakers.  We tend to close to the long [i] sound when saying the letter "H" instead of the shorter [ɪ] sound.  Also, I'm not sure what standard OED is utilizing and I'm sure it's correct in that standard, but the French-based IPA would definitely include a diphthong mark between the first two vowels [e:ɪ] instead of your cited [eɪ], which leads me to believe that we may be speaking different languages here...BerretSO4 (talk) 13:13, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
 * This is no longer very relevant to the article itself, but I do find it curious. "Proper British (England) for the number "2" includes a j-glide in IPA. [tju:] as opposed to [tu]." Do you have a reference for that? Not as proof, just because I'm curious and would like to look it up. The OED may not be a good reference for the notation of pronunciation; I have the impression that an earlier edition used a precursor of the IPA, and that the current edition has simply copied a lot of not totally standard notations. A source which does claim IPA notation is Daniel Jones's English Pronouncing Dictionary; my 14th edition (1977) gives [tu:], the same as the OED. Pol098 (talk) 17:27, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Considering relevance, let's continue this discussion on your talk page. Can we agree on the [ɛ:itʃ-tu] pronunciation notwithstanding another source?BerretSO4 (talk) 20:23, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Image Caption Label
I included a link to the Pillars of Creation within the appropriate picture caption. It goes to a three-line caption at this point. Is that a problem with anyone or is this an acceptable format anomaly? BerretSO4 (talk) 15:26, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

What's with the "II"?
Did I miss it, or do the first three paragraphs contain no clear explanation as to what the "II" actually means or why it is so named. I get that it's the roman numeral and pronounced "two" and HII is confused with H2. (Though whether HII = H2 is still unclear. If so, why two written forms? If not, why doesn't this confuse discussion with astronomers as well as non-astronomers?) I am (somewhat wildly) guessing the "II" comes from the 656.3 nm glow from electrons dropping into the n=2 energy state. Is that it? Other text implies HII means rarified protons. Whatever the meaning and origin, I suggest they could be made clearer in the introduction. Bob Stein - VisiBone (talk) 16:56, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I've added something, though it doesn't explain why "II" (I don't know. Does anybody?) Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 20:29, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

NGC604 Photo
The legend to the photo implies there should be "left" and "right" photos but I see only one. More generally it would be good to see a photo of the Triangulum Galaxy with NGC604 identified.Paulhummerman (talk) 12:06, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

"H II" is a spectrum...
... H+ is a baryon. It's best to keep them straight.108.69.74.103 (talk) 00:24, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Orion Nebula
It says: "the first such object discovered".

How can that be? The Orion Nebula is visible to the naked eye; almost every human that has paid attention to the sky must have "discovered" it".

The article attributing its discovery to de Peiresc says: "Today the visible nebula is certainly one of the most conspicuous deep space objects in the sky, and it is a commonly accepted fact that it is a naked-eye object". It also says "it seems extremely odd that such a conspicuous object had to be 'discovered' at all".

I think the claim that de Peiresc "discovered" it is not supported by the citations.

MrDemeanour (talk) 16:26, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
 * "The French observer Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc is credited with the discovery of the Orion Nebula in 1610" The source (Harrison 1984) has considered the naked-eye character of the nebula, saying that, although the nebula is detectable today as a fuzzy star, there is no reference anywhere for it being observed until 1610. The source (p.66) says that a strong historical case can be made for it not shining before 1610. I don't have any opinion about this. Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 20:21, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Molecule or Atom?
it's stated the hydrogen is atomic but the cloud is molecular, which seems contradictory. 47.17.56.98 (talk) 11:55, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Where exactly? Ruslik_ Zero 20:05, 24 November 2023 (UTC)