H I clouds with spin temperatures less than 25 K. II - Physical properties of two neutral hydrogen clouds.
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Knapp, G. R.↗
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Neutral hydrogen cloud distances and the strength of the interstellar magnetc field
If HI clouds exist in pressure equilibrium in an environment where gas pressure is a function of z-distance and if HI cloud density is a function of z-distance, it can be shown that a quantity called the Virial Measure is a function of z-distance. The Virial Measure is that distance at which a cloud would be in gravitational equilibrium if its internal kinetic temperature is indicated by profile linewidth. The Virial Measure is derived from observed cloud parameters and has been calibrated for clouds of known distance so that it can be used to determine the distance to other HI clouds. The magnitude of various terms in the virial equation can thus be derived for several hundred HI clouds. It is demonstrated that the strength of the interstellar magnetic field is a function of z-distance.
Verschuur, G. L.↗
The distance to the high velocity clouds of neutral hydrogen
The goal of this project was to determine the distance to high velocity gas clouds. These clouds are believed to lie in the halo of the galaxy, but this is a matter of controversy. The technique was used to look for the effect of absorption by these clouds against the light of stars at various distances along the line of sight to these clouds. This was done in the ultraviolet using the International Ultraviolet Explorer. Absorption at the velocity of the clouds was not found in any of the stars, which have kiloparsec distances. It was concluded that the vertical distance to these clouds is at least 1.5 kpc, putting them firmly in the halo of the galaxy.
Bregman, Joel N.↗
Limits on the infrared and visual luminosity of the intergalactic H I cloud in Leo
Low surface brightness photometry of the intergalactic neutral hydrogen cloud in Leo sets upper limits on the intensity of this object of 28.0 mag/sq arcsec in the V photometric band and 22.8 mag/sq arcsec in the K band. The corresponding ratio of the H I mass to blue luminosity in the H I emission peaks of the cloud must be greater than 2.9 (solar units) depending on the star formation history of the object. The limits imposed on the star formation rate suggest a strong dependence of this rate on gas density.
Skrutskie, M. F.↗
The low energy plasma in the Uranian magnetosphere
The Plasma Science experiment on Voyager 2 detected a magnetosphere filled with a tenuous plasma, rotating with the planet. Temperatures of the plasma, composed of protons and electrons, ranged from 10 eV to about 1 keV. The sources of these protons and electrons are probably the ionosphere of Uranus or the extended neutral hydrogen cloud surrounding the planet. As at earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, there is an extended magnetotail with a central plasma sheet. Although similar in global structure to the magnetospheres of these planets, the large angle between the rotation and magnetic axes of the planet and the orientation of the rotation axis with respect to the solar wind flow make the Uranian magnetosphere unique.
Mcnutt, R. L., Jr.↗
Thermal plasma in outer planet magnetospheres
The plasma environments of the outer planets are a study in contrasts. The magnetosphere of Jupiter is dominated by the prodigious plasma output of Io, with losses due to diffusion driven by mass loading. At Saturn, the small icy satellites are the major sources of plasma for the inner magnetosphere. The low mass loading rates there imply that the densities of the plasma tori are limited by dissociative recombination, rather than diffusive transport. At Uranus, the icy satellites are negligible plasma sources compared to the input from the extended neutral hydrogen cloud and the ionosphere. Convection driven by the solar wind penetrates deep into the inner magnetosphere because of the unique orientation of the rotation axis of Uranus. The expected magnetosphere of Neptune is similar to that of Saturn and Jupiter, with Triton, the ring arcs, and the planet as possible plasma sources. The Voyager 2 encounter with Neptune holds out the hope of a passage through a nonterrestrial auroral region, a unique event in planetary exploration.
Belcher, J. W.↗
The North Galactic Pole Rift and the Local Hot Bubble
The North Galactic Pole Rift (NGPR) is one of the few distinct neutral hydrogen clouds at high Galactic latitudes that have well-defined distances. It is located at the edge of the Local Cavity (LC) and provides an important test case for understanding the Local Hot Bubble (LHB), the presumed location for the hot diffuse plasma responsible for much of the observed 1/4 keV emission originating in the solar neighborhood. Using data from the ROSAT All- Sky Survey and the Planck reddening map, we find the path length within the LC (LHB plus Complex of Local Interstellar Clouds) to be 98 plus or minus 27 pc, in excellent agreement with the distance to the NGPR of 98 +/- 6 pc. In addition, we examine another 14 directions that are distributed over the sky where the LC wall is apparently optically thick at 1/4 keV. We find that the data in these directions are also consistent with the LHB model and a uniform emissivity plasma filling most of the LC.
ISM: bubbles aEuro" ISM: clouds aEuro" ISM: magnet↗
The interstellar medium in the direction of the Crab Nebula - Reconciling soft X-ray and radio observations
The total soft X-ray photoabsorption cross section of the interstellar medium (ISM) in the direction of the Crab Nebula is computed on the basis of a two-phase model of the ISM. This cross section is used to reanalyze Copernicus data on the X-ray spectrum of the Crab between 0.7 and 1.5 keV. The total hydrogen column density along the line of sight to that nebula is found to be approximately 2.6 by 10 to the 21st power H atoms/sq cm. This result is evaluated in light of the two-phase model of the ISM, and the predictions based on the X-ray data are compared with results of radio and UV observations. A discrepancy between the radio and X-ray measurements of the hydrogen column density is resolved by noting that 21-cm absorption measurements sample only the neutral hydrogen in clouds while X-ray measurements are sensitive to all forms of hydrogen in both cloud and intercloud regions. It is suggested that roughly 50% of the hydrogen in the direction of the Crab Nebula is in clouds and that 85% of this hydrogen is neutral and atomic.
Ride, S. K.↗
Feasibility study of launch vehicle ground cloud neutralization
The distribution of hydrogen chloride in the cloud was analyzed as a function of launch pad geometry and rate of rise of the vehicle during the first 24 sec of burn in order to define neutralization requirements. Delivery systems of various types were developed in order to bring the proposed chemical agents in close contact with the hydrogen chloride. Approximately one-third of the total neutralizing agent required can be delivered from a ground installed system at the launch pad; concentrated sodium carbonate solution is the preferred choice of agent for this launch pad system. Two-thirds of the neutralization requirement appears to need delivery by aircraft. Only one chemical agent (ammonia) may be reasonably considered for delivery by aircraft, because weight and bulk of all other agents are too large.
Vanderarend, P. C.↗
Dust clouds in Orion and the interstellar neutral hydrogen distribution
According to published examples of the far IR observations in the Orion and its surroundings, several well defined dust clouds of different sizes and structure are present. For comparison of these clouds with the neutral hydrogen distribution on the area of approx. 1000 sq degs, the data from Pulkovo Sky Survey in the interstellar neutral Hydrogen Radio Line as well as special observations with the RATAN-600 telescope in 21 cm line were used. From the materials of Pulkovo HI Survey, the data were taken near the line emission at ten velocities between -21.8 and +25.6 km/s LSR for the structural component of the interstellar hydrogen emission. The results given concern mainly the Orion's Great Dust Cloud and the Lambda Orionis region where the information about the situation with the dust and interstellar hydrogen is very essential for interpretation.
Bystrova, N. V.↗
Multifrequency survey of the intergalactic cloud in the M96 group
The intergalactic cloud of neutral hydrogen in the M96 group are examined for signs of emission over a wide range of frequencies, from radio waves to X rays. Past or present stellar activity in the gas might have been expected to produce detectable visual infrared, CO, OH, or radio recombination-line emission. None was detected. The limits are used to study physical conditions in the intergalactic gas. In particular, B and V band limits on starlight and IRAS limits on the presence of dust strongly constrain the presence of stars or stellar by-products. However, given the uncertainties about physical conditions in the intergalactic environment, it is difficult to rule out entirely the presence of stellar-processed materials. Results of neutral hydrogen mapping from a large-scale survey of the intergalactic cloud and surrounding region are also presented. These observations confirm that the gas is confined to a large ringlike structure. The simplest interpretation remains that the intergalactic gas in Leo is primordial.
Schneider, Stephen E.↗
High velocity clouds in nearby disk galaxies
Clouds of neutral hydrogen in our galaxy with the absolute value of v greater than 100 km/s cover approximately 10 percent of the sky to a limiting column density of 1 x 10(exp 18) cm(exp -2). These high velocity clouds (HVCs) may dominate the kinetic energy of neutral hydrogen in non-circular motion, and are an important though poorly understood component of galactic gas. It has been suggested that the HVCs can be reproduced by a combination of three phenomena: a galactic fountain driven by disk supernovae which would account for most of the HVCs, material tidally torn from the Magellanic Clouds, and an outer arm complex which is associated with the large scale structure of the warped galactic disk. We sought to detect HVCs in external galaxies in order to test the galactic fountain model.
Schulman, Eric↗
Intergalactic Hydrogen Clouds at Low Redshift: Connections to Voids and Dwarf Galaxies
We provide new post-COSTAR data on one sightline (Mrk 421) and updated data from another (I Zw 1) from our Hubble Space Telescope (HST) survey of intergalactic Ly(alpha) clouds located along sightlines to four bright quasars passing through well-mapped galaxy voids (16000 km/s pathlength) and superclusters (18000 km/s). We report two more definite detections of low-redshift Ly(alpha) clouds in voids: one at 3047 km/s (heliocentric) toward Mrk 421 and a second just beyond the Local Supercluster at 2861 km/s toward I Zw 1, confirming our earlier discovery of Ly(alpha) absorption clouds in voids (Stocke et al., ApJ, 451, 24). We have now identified ten definite and one probable low-redshift neutral hydrogen absorption clouds toward four targets, a frequency of approximately one absorber every 3400 km/s above 10(exp 12.7/sq cm column density. Of these ten absorption systems, three lie within voids; the probable absorber also lies in a void. Thus, the tendency of Ly(alpha) absorbers to 'avoid the voids' is not as clear as we found previously. If the Ly(alpha) clouds are approximated as homogeneous spheres of 100 kpc radius, their masses are approximately 10(exp 9)solar mass (about 0.01 times that of bright L* galaxies) and they are 40 times more numerous, comparable to the density of dwarf galaxies and of low-mass halos in numerical CDM simulations. The Ly(alpha) clouds contribute a fraction Omega(sub cl)approximately equals 0.003/h(sub 75) to the closure density of the universe, comparable to that of luminous matter. These clouds probably require a substantial amount of nonbaryonic dark matter for gravitational binding. They may represent extended haloes of low-mass protogalaxies which have not experienced significant star formation or low-mass dwarf galaxies whose star formation ceased long ago, but blew out significant gaseous material.
Shull, J. Michael↗
Searching for Lyman alpha emission from a possible Zel'dovich pancake
The detection of 2 x 10(exp 14) solar mass of neutral hydrogen at a redshift of 3.397 has been reported. Top-down theories of structure formation predict such a mass of hydrogen collapsing to form a protocluster of galaxies. We sought to observe this object in Lyman-alpha, which could be produced through ionization by the metagalactic ionizing radiation field or through internal ionization processes. On 29 Apr. 1992, the region of the reported HI emission for 1800 seconds with the 1.3 meter McGraw-Hill reflector at Michigan-Dartmouth-M.I.T. Observatory was observed. Because the H1 emission reported has a transverse scale of 300 sec, a 1/3.06 reducing camera and a Thomson CCD were used to obtain a field of view of about 600 sec by 840 sec. A filter 88 A wide, centered at 5354 A was used; Lyman-alpha emission at z = 3.4 is redshifted to 5347 A. In order to avoid saturating the CCD with a bright star in the field, nine 200 second exposures were taken. The combination of these images shows no obvious extended Lyman-alpha emission at a level of about 28 magnitudes per square arcsecond. The field observed also shows a distant cluster of galaxies. In order to determine if the cluster could in any way be associated with the cloud of neutral hydrogen at z = 3.4, we sought to estimate its redshift from the size and magnitude of the galaxies and of the cluster as a whole. Omega = 1 and H(sub O) = 50 km s(sup -1) Mpc(sup -1) were adopted; our redshift estimates range from z = 0.2 to z = 0.6. The cluster is clearly not associated with the HI cloud at z = 3.4.
Cox, Caroline↗
Dust-to-gas ratio in the outer regions of spiral galaxies
Some spiral galaxies are surrounded by extended clouds of neutral hydrogen; if dust is associated with this gas, the dust should appear as a faint extended reflection nebula illuminated by the light from the entire galaxy. It is suggested that observations of the surface brightness of the outer regions of M83 and M101 could be worthwhile, since these two galaxies are bright and have extended surrounding gas clouds. Such studies would be of interest with regard to the possible presence of faint extended halos of stars around galaxies, the extent of the metallicity gradients in galaxies, and the value of the dust-to-gas ratio in quasar absorption-line systems.
Jura, M.↗
The acceleration of high-velocity clouds in supernova remnants
Interstellar clouds passed by blast waves emanating from supernova explosions will be accelerated by the ram pressure of the expanding interior shocked gas. We present numerical and analytical solutions for cloud acceleration in this environment, comparing the results with recent observations of faint, high-velocity (greater than 100 km/sec) filaments observed in Cygnus and Vela. Photons from the conductive interface between the clouds and the surrounding medium can provide the ionizing flux necessary for observable optical emission. Several predictions are made, the most important of which is that fast clouds of neutral hydrogen with column densities of about 10 quintillion per sq cm should be observable in 21 cm studies of SNRs.
Mckee, C. F.↗
An H I survey of high-velocity clouds in nearby disk galaxies
We observed 14 nearly face-on disk galaxies with the Arecibo 305 m telescope and found the double-horned H I profiles to have high-velocity wings in 10 of these galaxies. Such wings can be caused by high-velocity clouds, similar to those observed in our own Galaxy. Disk galaxy models were constructed that include both high-velocity clouds (modeled as a component of galactic gas with a velocity dispersion of either 30 or 50 km/s) and warped H I disks. We find that the high-velocity wings can be reproduced by models with high-velocity clouds but not by models with warps that are similar to those observed in other galaxies. If these wings are due to high-velocity clouds, then the mass of neutral hydrogen in high-velocity clouds for the 10 galaxies ranges from 6 X 10(exp 7) solar mass to 4 x 10(exp 9) solar mass, which corresponds to 4% - 14% of the total H I in these galaxies. The galaxies with no detected high-velocity wings are also those with the lowest far-infrared fluxes as measured by Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS), which is consistent with the galactic fountain model in which the young stellar population (responsible for most of the far-infrared emission produces supernovae which then provide the kinetic energy of the high-velocity clouds.
Schulman, Eric↗
Evolution of Structure in the Intergalactic Medium and the Nature of the LY-Alpha Forest
We have performed a detailed statistical study of the evolution of structure in a photoionized intergalactic medium (IGM) using analytical simulations to extend the calculation into the mildly nonlinear density regime found to prevail at z = 3. Our work is based on a simple fundamental conjecture: that the probability distribution function of the density of baryonic diffuse matter in the universe is described by a lognormal (LN) random field. The LN distribution has several attractive features and follows plausibly from the assumption of initial linear Gaussian density and velocity fluctuations at arbitrarily early times. Starting with a suitably normalized power spectrum of primordial fluctuations in a universe dominated by cold dark matter (CDM), we compute the behavior of the baryonic matter, which moves slowly toward minima in the dark matter potential on scales larger than the Jeans length. We have computed two models that succeed in matching observations. One is a nonstandard CDM model with OMEGA = 1, h = 0.5, and GAMMA = 0.3, and the other is a low-density flat model with a cosmological constant (LCDM), with OMEGA = 0.4, OMEGA(sub LAMBDA) = 0.6, and h = 0.65. In both models, the variance of the density distribution function grows with time, reaching unity at about z = 4, where the simulation yields spectra that closely resemble the Ly-alpha forest absorption seen in the spectra of high-z quasars. The calculations also successfully predict the observed properties of the Ly-alpha forest clouds and their evolution from z = 4 down to at least z = 2, assuming a constant intensity for the metagalactic UV background over this redshift range. However, in our model the forest is not due to discrete clouds, but rather to fluctuations in a continuous intergalactic medium. At z = 3; typical clouds with measured neutral hydrogen column densities N(sub H I) = 10(exp 13.3), 10(exp 13.5), and 10(exp 11.5) /sq cm correspond to fluctuations with mean total densities approximately 10, 1, and 0.1 times the universal mean baryon density. Perhaps surprisingly, fluctuations whose amplitudes are less than or equal to the mean density still appear as "clouds" because in our model more than 70% of the volume of the IGM at z = 3 is filled with gas at densities below the mean value.
Bi, Hongguang↗