A Gelfand-Naimark type theorem

Abstract: Let $X$ be a completely regular space. For a non-vanishing self-adjoint Banach subalgebra $H$ of $C_B(X)$ which has local units we construct the spectrum $\mathfrak{sp}(H)$ of $H$ as an open subspace of the Stone-Cech compactification of $X$ which contains $X$ as a dense subspace. The construction of $\mathfrak{sp}(H)$ is simple. This enables us to study certain properties of $\mathfrak{sp}(H)$, among them are various compactness and connectedness properties. In particular, we find necessary and sufficient conditions in terms of either $H$ or $X$ under which $\mathfrak{sp}(H)$ is connected, locally connected and pseudocompact, strongly zero-dimensional, basically disconnected, extremally disconnected, or an $F$-space.