Lyman-beta and Fe II emission from QSOs and peculiar galaxies.

The scattering of L-beta in an idealized QSO envelope is examined, including the effects of noncoherent scattering. Approximate analytic results are presented for plane-parallel and spherical geometries. Detailed numerical results for the plane-parallel case are also presented to show that the approximate treatment is reasonably accurate. It is shown that appreciable errors can be made if the observations of L-beta in QSOs are interpreted in terms of an analysis based on coherent scattering. Similar formulae are then derived for the scattering of multiplet 3UV of Fe II. The presence of optical Fe II emission (in this case, multiplet 42) is shown to indicate the presence of large amounts of matter in the region around the central nonthermal source. The effects of inhomogeneities in the scattering medium are considered briefly.