Description
We present high-quality ground-based spectroscopic observations of 54 supergiant H II regions in 50 low-metallicity blue compact galaxies with oxygen abundances 12+Log[O/H] between 7.1 and 8.3. We use the data to determine abundances for the elements N, O, Ne, S, Ar, and Fe. We also analyze Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Faint Object Spectrograph archival spectra of 10 supergiant H II regions to derive C and Si abundances in a subsample of seven blue compact galaxies. The main result of the present study is that none of the heavy element-to-oxygen abundance ratios studied here (C/O, N/O, Ne/O, Si/O, S/O, Ar/O, Fe/O) depend on oxygen abundance for blue compact galaxies with 12+Log[O/H]{<=}7.6 (Z{<=}Z_{solar}/20).
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