An ATCA Survey of HI Absorption in the Magellanic Clouds. I. H I Gas Temperature Measurements in the Small Magellanic Cloud

Date

2019

Authors

Jameson, Katherine
McClure-Griffiths, Naomi
Liu, Boyang
Dickey, John
Staveley-Smith, Lister
Stanimirovic, Snezana
Dempsey, James
Dawson, Joanne R
D�nes, Helga
Bolatto, Alberto

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

IOP Publishing

Abstract

We present the first results from the Small Magellanic Cloud portion of a new Australia Telescope Compact Array H i absorption survey of both of the Magellanic Clouds, comprising over 800 hr of observations. Our new H i absorption line data allow us to measure the temperature and fraction of cold neutral gas in a low-metallicity environment. We observed 22 separate fields, targeting a total of 55 continuum sources, against 37 of which we detected H i absorption; from this we measure a column-density-weighted mean average spin temperature of $\langle {T}_{{\rm{s}}}\rangle $ = 150 K. Splitting the spectra into individual absorption line features, we estimate the temperatures of different gas components and find an average cold gas temperature of ∼30 K for this sample, lower than the average of ∼40 K in the Milky Way. The H i appears to be evenly distributed throughout the SMC, and we detect absorption in 67% of the lines of sight in our sample, including some outside the main body of the galaxy (NH i $\gt 2\times {10}^{21}$ cm−2). The optical depth and temperature of the cold neutral atomic gas show no strong trend with location spatially or in velocity. Despite the low-metallicity environment, we find an average cold gas fraction of ∼20%, not dissimilar from that of the Milky Way.

Description

Keywords

galaxies: ISM, ISM: clouds, Magellanic Clouds, radio lines: ISM

Citation

Source

The Astrophysical Journal

Type

Journal article

Book Title

Entity type

Access Statement

Open Access

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Restricted until

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