Globulettes in four HII regions

From our collection of H{alpha} images of 10 HII regions gathered at the Nordic Optical Telescope, we found 173 such clouds, which we call "globulettes", since they are much smaller than normal globules and form a distinct class of objects. Many globulettes are quite isolated and located far from the molecular shells and elephant trunks associated with the regions.

Others are attached to the trunks (or shells), suggesting that globulettes may form as a consequence of erosion of these larger structures. None of our objects appear to contain stellar objects. The globulettes were measured for position, dimension, and orientation, and we find that most objects are smaller than 10kAU.