Spectroscopic Follow-up of Two Star-forming Objects in the M101 Field* *Based on observations obtained with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET), which is a joint project of the University of Texas at Austin, the Pennsylvania State University, Ludwig-Maximillians-Universitaet Muenchen, and Georg-August Universitaet Goettingen.

Abstract

We present the spectra of two faint star-forming objects originally identified in our deep narrowband survey of the M101 Group. One is an isolated H ii region near the M101 Group galaxy NGC 5474, and the other is projected close to the background galaxy NGC 5486. Both are spectroscopically confirmed to be physically associated with their nearby host. We estimate the oxygen abundances for each system using strong-line methods. For the source near NGC 5474, we use GALEX UV photometry to estimate an age of ∼200 Myr and suggest a connection to the M101-NGC 5474 interaction.