Fifty Years of Investigations on the Origin and Nature of Hot Gases in Space

Details Fifty Years of Investigations on the Origin and Nature of Hot Gases in Space Fifty Years of Investigations on the Origin and Nature of Hot Gases in Space

Jun 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006aas...208.3401j&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society Meeting 208, #34.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.109

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On the basis of indirect observational evidence, in 1956 Lyman Spitzer proposed that the Galactic plane is surrounded by a corona of low density gas at temperatures of around 106 K. It took some time to confirm this idea, since observatories in space were needed to gather the required ultraviolet spectroscopic evidence and detect the soft X-ray emission. In the 1970's the Copernicus satellite recorded interstellar O VI absorption for sight lines within the Milky Way, signaling the presence of material at temperatures of about 300,000 K, and small experiments launched on sounding rockets recorded a soft X-ray background emitted by gases at temperatures of order or greater than 106 K. Theorists proposed that blast waves from supernovae could produce and maintain an extensive network of hot gas within the Galactic plane, and that such material could also invade the halo regions, either to escape as a galactic wind or to assume the form of a "Galactic fountain" as it cools radiatively, condenses, and falls back onto the plane.In recent years, ever more powerful UV and X-ray observatories that can detect both the emission and absorption by highly ionized atoms have confirmed that hot plasmas extend well outside the thin disk structures of galaxies and even permeate vast regions of space between galaxies. This material can be the product of either star formation activity within the galaxies or the accretion and shocking of more generally distributed material that accumulates in the gravitational potential wells of cosmic structures, including those identified with individual galaxies and clusters of galaxies.

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