THE RELATION BETWEEN ABUNDANCE GRADIENTS AND THE PHYSICAL-PROPERTIES OF SPIRAL GALAXIES

Some correlations of the behaviour of chemical abundance gradients with other physical properties of spiral galaxies are established. The sample is some 30 galaxies for which good published spectrophotometry of H II regions is available. The central abundances of spirals are correlated with their mass, barred galaxies have shallow gradients, and non-barred spirals show a correlation of gradient slope with morphological type. The correlation of abundance with mass surface density is confirmed and there are indications that the effective yield may vary as a function of metallicity.