No Arabic abstract
The fractal structure of the interstellar medium suggests that the interaction of UV radiation with the ISM as described in the context of photon-dominated regions (PDR) dominates most of the physical and chemical conditions, and hence the far-infrared and submm emission from the ISM in the Milky Way. We investigate to what extent the Galactic FIR line emission of the important species CO, C, C+, and O, as observed by the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite can be modeled in the framework of a clumpy, UV-penetrated cloud scenario. The far-infrared line emission of the Milky Way is modeled as the emission from an ensemble of clumps with a power law clump mass spectrum and mass-size relation with power-law indices consistent with the observed ISM structure. The individual clump line intensities are calculated using the KOSMA-tau PDR-model for spherical clumps. The model parameters for the cylindrically symmetric Galactic distribution of the mass density and volume filling factor are determined by the observed radial distributions. A constant FUV intensity, in which the clumps are embedded, is assumed. We show that this scenario can explain, without any further assumptions and within a factor of about 2, the absolute FIR-line intensities and their distribution with Galactic longitude as observed by COBE.
Star formation at earlier cosmological times takes place in an interstellar medium with low metallicity. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is ideally suited to study star formation in such an environment. The physical and chemical state of the ISM in a star forming environment can be constrained by observations of submm and FIR spectral lines of the main carbon carrying species, CO, CI and CII, which originate in the surface layers of molecular clouds illuminated by the UV radiation of the newly formed, young stars. We present high-angular resolution sub-millimeter observations in the N159W region in the LMC obtained with the NANTEN2 telescope of the 12CO J = 4-3, J = 7-6, and 13CO J = 4-3 rotational and [CI] 3P1-3P0 and 3P2-3P1 fine-structure transitions. The 13CO J =4-3 and [CI] 3P2-3P1 transitions are detected for the first time in the LMC. We derive the physical and chemical properties of the low-metallicity molecular gas using an escape probability code and a self-consistent solution of the chemistry and thermal balance of the gas in the framework of a clumpy cloud PDR model. The separate excitation analysis of the submm CO lines and the carbon fine structure lines shows that the emitting gas in the N159W region has temperatures of about 80 K and densities of about 10^4 cm^-3. The estimated C to CO abundance ratio close to unity is substantially higher than in dense massive star-forming regions in the Milky Way. The analysis of all observed lines together, including the [CII] line intensity reported in the literature, in the context of a clumpy cloud PDR model constrains the UV intensity to about chi ~220 and an average density of the clump ensemble of about 10^5 cm^-3, thus confirming the presence of high density material in the LMC N159W region.
We present the far-ultraviolet (FUV) fluorescent molecular hydrogen (H_2) emission map of the Milky Way Galaxy obtained with FIMS/SPEAR covering ~76% of the sky. The extinction-corrected intensity of the fluorescent H_2 emission has a strong linear correlation with the well-known tracers of the cold interstellar medium (ISM), including color excess E(B-V), neutral hydrogen column density N(H I), and H_alpha emission. The all-sky H_2 column density map was also obtained using a simple photodissociation region model and interstellar radiation fields derived from UV star catalogs. We estimated the fraction of H2 (f_H2) and the gas-to-dust ratio (GDR) of the diffuse ISM. The f_H2 gradually increases from <1% at optically thin regions where E(B-V) < 0.1 to ~50% for E(B-V) = 3. The estimated GDR is ~5.1 x 10^21 atoms cm^-2 mag^-1, in agreement with the standard value of 5.8 x 10^21 atoms cm^-2 mag^-1.
The Milky Way galaxy is surrounded by a circumgalactic medium (CGM) that may play a key role in galaxy evolution as the source of gas for star formation and a repository of metals and energy produced by star formation and nuclear activity. The CGM may also be a repository for baryons seen in the early universe, but undetected locally. The CGM has an ionized component at temperatures near $2 times 10^{6}$~K studied primarily in the soft X-ray band. Here we report a survey of the southern Galactic sky with a soft X-ray spectrometer optimized to study diffuse soft X-ray emission. The X-ray emission is best fit with a disc-like model based on the radial profile of the surface density of molecular hydrogen, a tracer of star formation, suggesting that the X-ray emission is predominantly from hot plasma produced via stellar feedback. Strong variations in the X-ray emission on angular scales of $sim10^{circ}$ indicate that the CGM is clumpy. Addition of an extended, and possibly massive, halo component is needed to match the halo density inferred from other observations.
We present observations towards one of the closest regions of high mass star formation, Orion BN/KL, performed at both low resolution mode (grating mode) and high resolution mode (Fabry-Perot) with the Long Wavelength Spectrometer on board the Infrared Space Observatory. We detected the CO rotational lines from Jup = 15 to Jup = 45. While the lines with Jup<= 32 are spectrally unresolved, the higher lying lines show a broadened profile. Finally, we detected two 13CO lines, namely at Jup = 18 and 24, from which we could derive the opacities of the relative 12CO lines. The LVG analysis of the observed line spectrum allows to distinguish three main physical components with different temperatures, densities and column densities: 1) lines with Jup< 20 originate mainly in the diffuse photodissociation region surrounding the source; 2) lines with Jup between 20 and 30 originate in the high velocity outflow (plateau) emanating from IrC2; 3) lines with Jup > 32 originate in the hot and dense gas of the shocked component of the outflow. We discuss how future observations with HIFI, onboard the Far Infrared Space Telescope (FIRST) will allow to spectrally and spatially disentangle the three components, and, consequently, characterise more precisely the Orion BN/KL star forming region.
We present all-sky maps of two major FUV cooling lines, C IV and O VI, of highly ionized gas to investigate the nature of the transition-temperature gas. From the extinction-corrected line intensities of C IV and O VI, we calculated the gas temperature and the emission measure of the transition-temperature gas assuming isothermal plasma in the collisional ionization equilibrium. The gas temperature was found to be more or less uniform throughout the Galaxy with a value of (1.89 $pm$ 0.06) $times$ $10^5$ K. The emission measure of the transition-temperature gas is described well by a disk-like model in which the scale height of the electron density is $z_0=6_{-2}^{+3}$ kpc. The total mass of the transition-temperature gas is estimated to be approximately $6.4_{-2.8}^{+5.2}times10^9 M_{bigodot}$. We also calculated the volume-filling fraction of the transition-temperature gas, which was estimated to be $f=0.26pm0.09$, and varies from $fsim0.37$ in the inner Galaxy to $fsim0.18$ in the outer Galaxy. The spatial distribution of C IV and O VI cannot be explained by a simple supernova remnant model or a three-phase model. The combined effects of supernova remnants and turbulent mixing layers can explain the intensity ratio of C IV and O VI. Thermal conduction front models and high-velocity cloud models are also consistent with our observation.