The Horizontal Branch in the UV Colour Magnitude Diagrams. II. The case
  of M3, M13 and M79
  We present a detailed comparison between far-UV/optical colour Magnitude
Diagrams obtained with high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope data and suitable
theoretical models for three Galactic Globular Clusters: M3, M13 and M79. These
systems represents a classical example of clusters in the intermediate
metallicity regime that, even sharing similar metal content and age, show
remarkably different Horizontal Branch morphologies. As a consequence, the
observed differences in the colour distributions of Horizontal Branch stars
cannot be interpreted in terms of either first (metallicity) or a second
parameter such as age. We investigate here the possible role of variations of
initial Helium abundance (Y). Thanks to the use of a proper setup of far-UV
filters, we are able to put strong constraints on the maximum Y (Y_{max})
values compatible with the data. We find differences Delta Y_{max} ~ 0.02-0.04
between the clusters with M13 showing the largest value (Y_{max} ~ 0.30) and M3
the smallest (Y_{max} ~ 0.27). In general we observe that these values are
correlated with the colour extensions of their Horizontal Branches and with the
range of the observed Na-O anti-correlations.
