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Description
As part of our ongoing HII Region Discovery Survey (HRDS), we report the Green Bank Telescope detection of 148 new angularly large Galactic HII regions in radio recombination line (RRL) emission. Our targets are located at a declination of {delta}>-45{deg}, which corresponds to 266{deg}>l>-20{deg} at b=0{deg}. All sources were selected from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer Catalog of Galactic HII Regions, and have infrared angular diameters >=260". The Galactic distribution of these "large" HII regions is similar to that of the previously known sample of Galactic HII regions. The large HII region RRL line width and peak line intensity distributions are skewed toward lower values, compared with that of previous HRDS surveys. We discover seven sources with extremely narrow RRLs <10km/s. If half the line width is due to turbulence, these seven sources have thermal plasma temperatures <1100K. These temperatures are lower than any measured for Galactic HII regions, and the narrow-line components may arise instead from partially ionized zones in the HII region photodissociation regions. We discover G039.515+00.511, one of the most luminous HII regions in the Galaxy. We also detect the RRL emission from three HII regions with diameters >100pc, making them some of the physically largest known HII regions in the Galaxy. This survey completes the HRDS HII region census in the Northern sky, where we have discovered 887 HII regions and more than doubled the size of the previously known census of Galactic HII regions.
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