Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 August 2015
Giant HII regions as sites of massive star formation.
Giant HII regions are the brightest extragalactic emission line objects that can be studied in detail. With diameters of several hundreds of parsecs, these nebulae can be easily resolved out to distances of a few Mpc. Typically 100 or more 0 stars are required to account for the observed ionization of the nebular gas and this implies that the cores of giant HII regions contain populous young star clusters. The stars in these clusters have essentially the same age and chemical composition. Thus, giant HII region cores provide excellent sites where theories of the formation and evolution of massive stars and, in particular, of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars can be tested.