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An ATCA survey of HI absorption in the Magellanic Clouds. I. H I gas temperature measurements in the small Magellanic Cloud

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posted on 2023-05-21, 12:53 authored by Jameson, K, McClure-Griffiths, NM, Liu, B, John DickeyJohn Dickey, Staveley-Smith, L, Stanimirovic, S, Dempsey, JM, Joanne Dawson, Denes, H, Bolatto, AD, Li, D, Wong, T

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 = 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 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.

History

Publication title

Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series

Volume

244

Pagination

1-17

ISSN

0067-0049

Department/School

School of Natural Sciences

Publisher

Institute of Physics Publishing, Inc

Place of publication

United States

Rights statement

© 2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Expanding knowledge in the physical sciences

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