No Arabic abstract
Radio recombination lines (RRLs) can be used to determine the emission measure unambiguously along the Galactic plane. We use the deep (2100s per beam) HI Parkes Zone of Avoidance survey which includes 3 RRLs (H$166alpha$, H$167alpha$ and H$168alpha$) within its bandwidth. The region $ell = 36degr$ to $44degr$, $b = -4degr$ to $+4degr$ is chosen to include emission from the Local, Sagittarius and Scutum arms. An $8degr times 8degr$ data cube centred at $(ell, b) = (40degr, 0degr)$ is constructed of RRL spectra with velocity and spatial resolution of 27$kms$ and 15.5 arcmin, respectively. Well-known hii regions are identified as well as the diffuse RRL emission on the Galactic plane. A Galactic latitude section of the integrated RRL emission across the Galactic plane delineates the brightness temperature ($T_{b}$) distribution which has a half-power width in latitude of $simeq 1fdg5$. A value of the electron temperature $T_{e} simeq 8000$ K is derived from a comparison with the WMAP free-free MEM model. The $T_{b}$ distribution from the present RRL data is combined with the WMAP 5-yr data to derive the anomalous dust on the Galactic ridge. In this paper we demonstrate that diffuse ionized emission on the Galactic ridge can be recovered using RRLs from the ZOA survey. This method is therefore able to complement the ha data at low Galactic latitudes, to enable an all-sky free-free template to be derived.
We present the derivation of the free-free emission on the Galactic plane between l=20 and 44 degrees and |b| < 4 degrees, using Radio Recombination Line (RRL) data from the HI Parkes All-Sky Survey (HIPASS). Following an upgrade on the RRL data reduction technique, which improves significantly the quality of the final RRL spectra, we have extended the analysis to three times the area covered in Alves et al. (2010). The final RRL map has an angular resolution of 14.8 arcmin and a velocity resolution of 20 km/s. A map of the electron temperature (Te) of the ionised gas is derived for the area under study using the line and continuum data from the present survey. The mean Te on the Galactic plane is 6000 K. The first direct measure of the free-free emission is obtained based on the derived Te map. Subtraction of this thermal component from the total continuum leaves the first direct measure of the synchrotron emission at 1.4 GHz. A narrow component of width 2 degrees is identified in the latitude distribution of the synchrotron emission. We present a list of HII regions and SNRs extracted from the present free-free and synchrotron maps, where we confirm the synchrotron nature of three objects: G41.12-0.21, G41.15+0.39 and G35.59-0.44. We also identify a bright (42 Jy) new double radio galaxy, J1841-0152, previously unrecognised owing to the high optical extinction in the region. The latitude distribution for the RRL-derived free-free emission shows that the WMAP Maximum Entropy Method (MEM) is too high by ~ 50 per cent, in agreement with other recent results. The extension of this study to the inner Galaxy region l=-50 to 50 degrees will allow a better overall comparison of the RRL result with WMAP.
We present an estimate of the polarized spectral index between the Planck 30 and 44 GHz surveys in $3.7^circ$ pixels across the entire sky. We use an objective reference prior that maximises the impact of the data on the posterior and multiply this by a maximum entropy prior that includes information from observations in total intensity by assuming a polarization fraction. Our parametrization of the problem allows the reference prior to be easily determined and also provides a natural method of including prior information. The spectral index map is consistent with those found by others between surveys at similar frequencies. Across the entire sky we find an average temperature spectral index of $-2.99pm0.03(pm1.12)$ where the first error term is the statistical uncertainty on the mean and the second error term (in parentheses) is the extra intrinsic scatter in the data. We use a clustering algorithm to identify pixels with actual detections of the spectral index. The average spectral index in these pixels is $-3.12pm0.03(pm0.64)$ and then when also excluding pixels within $10^circ$ of the Galactic plane we find $-2.92(pm0.03)$. We find a statistically significant difference between the average spectral indices in the North and South Fermi bubbles. Only including pixels identified by the clustering algorithm, the average spectral index in the southern bubble is $-3.00pm0.05(pm0.35)$, which is similar to the average across the whole sky. In the northern bubble we find a much harder average spectral index of $-2.36pm0.09(pm0.63)$. Therefore, if the bubbles are features in microwave polarization they are not symmetric about the Galactic plane.
Ionized carbon is the main gas-phase reservoir of carbon in the neutral diffuse interstellar medium and its 158 micron fine structure transition [CII] is the most important cooling line of the diffuse interstellar medium (ISM). We combine [CII] absorption and emission spectroscopy to gain an improved understanding of physical conditions in the different phases of the ISM. We present high resolution [CII] spectra obtained with the Herschel/HIFI instrument towards bright dust continuum sources regions in the Galactic plane, probing simultaneously the diffuse gas along the line of sight and the background high-mass star forming regions. These data are complemented by observations of the 492 and 809 GHz fine structure lines of atomic carbon and by medium spectral resolution spectral maps of the fine structure lines of atomic oxygen at 63 and 145 microns with Herschel/PACS. We show that the presence of foreground absorption may completely cancel the emission from the background source in medium spectral resolution data and that high spectral resolution spectra are needed to interpret the [CII] and [OI] emission and the [CII]/FIR ratio. This phenomenon may explain part of the [CII]/FIR deficit seen in external luminous infrared galaxies. The C+ and C excitation in the diffuse gas is consistent with a median pressure of 5900 Kcm-3 for a mean TK ~100 K. The knowledge of the gas density allows us to determine the filling factor of the absorbing gas along the selected lines of sight: the median value is 2.4 %, in good agreement with the CNM properties. The mean excitation temperature is used to derive the average cooling due to C+ in the Galactic plane : 9.5 x 10^{-26} erg/s/H. Along the observed lines of sight, the gas phase carbon abundance does not exhibit a strong gradient as a function of Galacto-centric radius and has a weighted average of C/H = 1.5 +/- 0.4 x 10^{-4}.
The first Herschel Hi-Gal images of the galactic plane unveil the far-infrared diffuse emission of the interstellar medium with an unprecedented angular resolution and sensitivity. In this paper, we present the first analysis of these data in combination with that of Spitzer Glimpse & Mipsgal. We selected a relatively diffuse and low excitation region of the l~59,^{circ} Hi-Gal Science Demonstration Phase field to perform a pixel by pixel fitting of the 8 to 500 microns SED using the DustEM dust emission model. We derived maps of the Very Small Grains (VSG) and PAH abundances from the model. Our analysis allows us to illustrate that the Aromatic Infrared Bands (AIB) intensity does not trace necessarily the PAH abundance but rather the product of abundance x column density x intensity of the exciting radiation field. We show that the spatial structure of PACS70microns map resembles the shorter wavelengths (e.g. IRAC8microns) maps, because they trace both the intensity of exciting radiation field and column density. We also show that the modeled VSG contribution to PACS70microns (PACS160microns) band intensity can be up to 50% (7%). The interpretation of diffuse emission spectra at these wavelengths must take stochastically heated particles into account. Finally, this preliminary study emphasizes the potential of analyzing the full dust SED sampled by Herschel and Spitzer data, with a physical dust model (DustEM) to reach the properties of the dust at simultaneously large and small scales.
Surveys of the Milky Way at various wavelengths have changed our view of star formation in our Galaxy considerably in recent years. In this paper we give an overview of the GLOSTAR survey, a new survey covering large parts (145 square degrees) of the northern Galactic plane using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (JVLA) in the frequency range 4-8 GHz and the Effelsberg 100-m telescope. This provides for the first time a radio survey covering all angular scales down to 1.5 arcsecond, similar to complementary near-IR and mid-IR galactic plane surveys. We outline the main goals of the survey and give a detailed description of the observations and the data reduction strategy. In our observations we covered the radio continuum in full polarization, as well as the 6.7 GHz methanol maser line, the 4.8~GHz formaldehyde line, and seven radio recombination lines. The observations were conducted in the most compact D configuration of the VLA and in the more extended B configuration. This yielded spatial resolutions of 18 and 1.5 for the two configurations, respectively. We also combined the D configuration images with the Effelsberg 100-m data to provide zero spacing information, and we jointly imaged the D- and B-configuration data for optimal sensitivity of the intermediate spatial ranges. Here we show selected results for the first part of the survey, covering the range of 28 deg <l<36 deg and |b|< 1 deg, including the full low-resolution continuum image, examples of high-resolution images of selected sources, and the first results from the spectral line data.