Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userFaint Extended OH Emission from the Local Interstellar Medium in the Direction l approx 108circ, b approx 5circ
165
0
0.0
(
0
)
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
We have mapped faint 1667 OH line emission (TA approx 20 - 40 mK in our approx 30 beam) along many lines of sight in the Galaxy covering an area of approx 4circ times 4circ in the general direction of l approx 108circ, b approx 5circ. The OH emission is widespread, similar in extent to the local HI (r </= 2 kpc) both in space and in velocity. The OH profile amplitudes show a good general correlation with those of HI in spectral channels of approx 1 km/s; this relation is described by TA(OH) approx 1.50 times 10^{-4} TB(HI) for values of TB(HI) </approx 60 - 70 K. Beyond this the HI line appears to saturate, and few values are recorded above approx 90 K. However, the OH brightness continues to rise, by a further factor approx 3. The OH velocity profiles show multiple features with widths typically 2 - 3 km/s, but less than 10% of these features are associated with CO(1-0) emission in existing surveys of the area smoothed to comparable resolution.
rate research
Read More
We report the first results from a survey for 1665, 1667, and 1720 MHz OH emission over a small region of the Outer Galaxy centered at $l approx 105.0deg , b approx +1.0deg$ . This sparse, high-sensitivity survey ($Delta Ta approx Delta Tmb approx 3.0 - 3.5$ mK rms in 0.55 km/s channels), was carried out as a pilot project with the Green Bank Telescope (GBT, FWHM $approx 7.6$) on a 3 X 9 grid at $0.5deg$ spacing. The pointings chosen correspond with those of the existing $^{12}$CO(1-0) CfA survey of the Galaxy (FWHM $approx 8.4$). With 2-hr integrations, 1667 MHz OH emission was detected with the GBT at $gtrsim 21$ of the 27 survey positions ($geq 78%$ ), confirming the ubiquity of molecular gas in the ISM as traced by this spectral line. With few exceptions, the main OH lines at 1665 and 1667 MHz appear in the ratio of 5:9 characteristic of LTE at our sensitivity levels. No OH absorption features are recorded in the area of the present survey, in agreement with the low levels of continuum background emission in this direction. At each pointing the OH emission appears in several components extending over a range of radial velocity and coinciding with well-known features of Galactic structure such as the Local Arm and the Perseus Arm. In contrast, little CO emission is seen in the survey area; less than half of the $gtrsim 50$ identified OH components show detectable CO at the CfA sensitivity levels, and these are generally faint. There are no CO profiles without OH emission. With few exceptions, peaks in the OH profiles coincide with peaks in the GBT HI spectra (obtained concurrently, FWHM $8.9$), although the converse is not true. We conclude that main-line OH emission is a promising tracer for the dark molecular gas in the Galaxy discovered earlier in Far-IR and gamma-ray emission. Further work is needed to establish the quantitative details of this connection.
Recent work reported the discovery of a gamma-ray burst (GRB) associated with the galaxy GN-z11 at $zsim 11$. The extreme improbability of the transient source being a GRB in the very early Universe requires robust elimination of all plausible alternative hypotheses. We identify numerous examples of similar transient signals in separate archival MOSFIRE observations and argue that Solar system objects -- natural or artificial -- are a far more probable explanation for these phenomena. An appendix has been added in response to additional points raised in Jiang et al. (2021), which do not change the conclusion.
Do molecular clouds collapse to form stars at the same rate in all environments? In large spiral galaxies, the rate of transformation of H2 into stars (hereafter SFE) varies little. However, the SFE in distant objects (z~1) is much higher than in the large spiral disks that dominate the local universe. Some small local group galaxies share at least some of the characteristics of intermediate-redshift objects, such as size or color. Recent work has suggested that the Star Formation Efficiency (SFE, defined as the SFRate per unit H2) in local Dwarf galaxies may be as high as in the distant objects. A fundamental difficulty in these studies is the independent measure of the H2 mass in metal-deficient environments. At 490 kpc, NGC6822 is an excellent choice for this study; it has been mapped in the CO(2-1) line using the multibeam receiver HERA on the 30 meter IRAM telescope, yielding the largest sample of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in this galaxy. Despite the much lower metallicity, we find no clear difference in the properties of the GMCs in NGC 6822 and those in the Milky Way except lower CO luminosities for a given mass. Several independent methods indicate that the total H2 mass in NGC 6822 is about 5 x 10^6 Msun in the area we mapped and less than 10^7 Msun in the whole galaxy. This corresponds to a NH2/ICO ~ 4 x 10^{21} cm^-2 /(Kkm/s) over large scales, such as would be observed in distant objects, and half that in individual GMCs. No evidence was found for H2 without CO emission. Our simulations of the radiative transfer in clouds are entirely compatible with these NH2/ICO values. The SFE implied is a factor 5 - 10 higher than what is observed in large local universe spirals.
The statistical characterization of the diffuse magnetized ISM and Galactic foregrounds to the CMB poses a major challenge. To account for their non-Gaussian statistics, we need a data analysis approach capable of efficiently quantifying statistical couplings across scales. This information is encoded in the data, but most of it is lost when using conventional tools, such as one-point statistics and power spectra. The wavelet scattering transform (WST), a low-variance statistical descriptor of non-Gaussian processes introduced in data science, opens a path towards this goal. We applied the WST to noise-free maps of dust polarized thermal emission computed from a numerical simulation of MHD turbulence. We analyzed normalized complex Stokes maps and maps of the polarization fraction and polarization angle. The WST yields a few thousand coefficients; some of them measure the amplitude of the signal at a given scale, and the others characterize the couplings between scales and orientations. The dependence on orientation can be fitted with the reduced WST (RWST), an angular model introduced in previous works. The RWST provides a statistical description of the polarization maps, quantifying their multiscale properties in terms of isotropic and anisotropic contributions. It allowed us to exhibit the dependence of the map structure on the orientation of the mean magnetic field and to quantify the non-Gaussianity of the data. We also used RWST coefficients, complemented by additional constraints, to generate random synthetic maps with similar statistics. Their agreement with the original maps demonstrates the comprehensiveness of the statistical description provided by the RWST. This work is a step forward in the analysis of observational data and the modeling of CMB foregrounds. We also release PyWST, a Python package to perform WST/RWST analyses at: https://github.com/bregaldo/pywst.
Context: The interstellar medium (ISM) on all scales is full of structures that can be used as tracers of processes that feed turbulence. Aims: We used HI survey data to derive global properties of the angular power distribution of the local ISM. Methods: HI4PI observations on an nside = 1024 HEALPix grid and Gaussian components representing three phases, the cold, warm, and unstable lukewarm neutral medium (CNM, WNM, and LNM), were used for velocities $|v_{mathrm{LSR}}| leq 25$ kms. For high latitudes $|b| > 20deg$ we generated apodized maps. After beam deconvolution we fitted angular power spectra. Results: Power spectra for observed column densities are exceptionally well defined and straight in log-log presentation with 3D power law indices $gamma geq -3$ for the local gas. For intermediate velocity clouds (IVCs) we derive $gamma = -2.6$ and for high velocity clouds (HVCs) $gamma = -2.0$. Single-phase power distributions for the CNM, LNM, and WNM are highly correlated and shallow with $ gamma sim -2.5$ for multipoles $l leq 100$. Excess power from cold filamentary structures is observed at larger multipoles. The steepest single-channel power spectra for the CNM are found at velocities with large CNM and low WNM phase fractions. Conclusions: The phase space distribution in the local ISM is configured by phase transitions and needs to be described with three distinct different phases, being highly correlated but having distributions with different properties. Phase transitions cause locally hierarchical structures in phase space. The CNM is structured on small scales and is restricted in position-velocity space. The LNM as an interface to the WNM envelops the CNM. It extends to larger scales than the CNM and covers a wider range of velocities. Correlations between the phases are self-similar in velocity.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
