Detection and study of the compact HII region N26A-B in the Small Magellanic Cloud

This paper presents new imagery and spectrophotometric results for the N26 HII region in the Small Magellanic Cloud. The observations using monochroma tic images and low-resolution spectra (3700-10 000 Angstrom) reveal a compa ct and complex nebula composed of two cores A and B where A in the region o f H beta is brighter than B by a factor similar to5 and distance of 2". The core A of FWHM similar to2."1 or 0.6 pc presents a high excitation [O III] lambda lambda 5007 + 4959/H beta up to similar to8 and a high reddening E( B-V) less than or equal to 0.6, while the core B is less excited but has a higher reddening greater than or equal to0.8. Each core contains one exciti ng source; the brighter one should be responsible for the high excitation o f A. The apparent spectral type of the two cores ranges from O7 to O9 V and the gas electron density and temperature were derived from the absorption and emission-line intensities. The total mass of the ionized gas is evaluat ed at 13 M-circle dot. The chemical abundances of He, O, N, Ne, S, and Ar w ere computed. These abundances seem consistent with average abundances for SMC HII regions, except N that appears slightly overabundant. N26A-B is com parable to the objects previously observed in the LMC and SMC that we have called "blobs".