Nebular diagnostics for young stellar populations: Photon escape versus atmosphere blanketing

Abstract

Emission lines in ionized nebulae can provide strong and useful constraints on the properties of both ionizing and non-ionizing stellar populations in regions with star formation, provided that stellar evolution and stellar atmosphere models can be used in a selfconsistent way. Recently, the application of these techniques has shown important discrepancies between predicted and observed nebular spectra that point to stellar atmosphere models of WR stars which are too energetic and/or to a significant leakageof high energy photons. In this contribution, these two alternatives are analyzed in detail.