The Colours of HII Galaxies

Abstract

We present high spatial resolution CCD surface photometry study in the optical V, R and I filters of 15 HII galaxies from the Nordic Optical Telescope and the Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope at Canary Islands. The colours of the starburst continuum and of the underlying galaxy are measured. The distribution of colours of the underlying galaxy in HII galaxies is similar to the colours of other late type low surface brightness galaxies which suggests a close kinship of these with the quiescent phases of HII galaxies. However, comparison with recent evolutionary population synthesis models show that the observational errors and the uncertainties in the models are still too large to put strict constraints on their past star formation history.