We present new upper limits on the neutral hydrogen (HI) content within the stellar half-light ellipses of 15 Galactic dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs), derived from pointed observations with the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) as well as Arecibo L-band
Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) survey and Galactic All-Sky Survey (GASS) data. All of the limits Mlim are more stringent than previously reported values, and those from the GBT improve upon contraints in the literature by a median factor of 23. Normalizing by V-band luminosity Lv and dynamical mass Mdyn, we find Mlim/Lv ~ 10^{-3} Mo/Lo and Mlim/Mdyn ~ 5 x 10^{-5}, irrespective of location in the Galactic halo. Comparing these relative HI contents to those of the Local Group and nearby neighbor dwarfs compiled by McConnachie, we find that the Galactic dSphs are extremely gas-poor. Our HI upper limits therefore provide the clearest picture yet of the environmental dependence of the HI content in Local Volume dwarfs. If ram pressure stripping explains the dearth of HI in these systems, then orbits in a relatively massive Milky Way are favored for the outer halo dSph Leo I, while Leo II and Canes Venatici I have had a pericentric passage in the past. For Draco and Ursa Minor, the interstellar medium mass that should accumulate through stellar mass loss in between pericentric passages exceeds Mlim by a factor of ~30. In Ursa Minor, this implies that either this material is not in the atomic phase, or that another mechanism clears the recycled gas on shorter timescales.
We have conducted a deep, complete HI survey, using Arecibo/ALFA, of a field centered on the nearby, isolated galaxy, NGC 2903, which is similar to the Milky Way in its properties. The field size was 150 kpc x 260 kpc and the final velocity range spa
nned from 100 to 1133 km/s. The ALFA beams have been mapped as a function of azimuth and cleaned from each azimuth-specific cube prior to forming final cubes. The final HI data are sensitive down to an HI mass of 2 x 10^5 Mo and column density of 2 x 10^{17} cm^{-2} at the 3sigma x 2deltaV level, where sigma is the rms noise level and deltaV is the velocity resolution. NGC 2903 is found to have an HI envelope that is larger than previously known, extending to at least 3 times the optical diameter of the galaxy. Our search for companions yields one new discovery with an HI mass of 2.6 x 10^6 Mo. The companion is 64 kpc from NGC 2903 in projection, is likely associated with a small optical galaxy of similar total stellar mass, and is dark matter dominated, with a total mass >10^8 Mo. In the region surveyed, there are now two known companions: our new discovery and a previously known system that is likely a dwarf spheroidal, lacking HI content. If HI constitutes 1% of the total mass in all possible companions, then we should have detected 230 companions, according to LCDM predictions. Consequently, if this number of dark matter clumps are indeed present, then they contain less than 1% HI content, possibly existing as very faint dwarf spheroidals or as starless, gasless dark matter clumps.
