astrobites
intergalactic medium
Grab the vacuum cleaner… it’s cosmic DUST!
Dust is really ubiquitous in the Universe: it is everywhere from our Solar System to stars and the interstellar medium. However, the observations of dust in galaxies fall short of the prediction of how much dust there is in the Universe. In this work, the authors try to alleviate this problem by estimating the amount of dust present in clouds of gas that inhabit galaxy halos while they look for clues regarding the origin of these clouds.
Disappearing act: how gamma-ray bursts help us find massive reservoirs of neutral hydrogen
Using a combination of spectra from gamma-ray burst afterglows and photometry and spectroscopy of nearby objects, astronomers have found the galaxy counterpart to at least one high-redshift absorption system, bumping the total number of such galaxies from nine to ten.
Where’s the gas around galaxies at z~2?
Researchers at Caltech have used data from the Keck Baryonic Structure Survey to place quantitative constraints on the circumgalactic medium around galaxies at z~2. Measurements like these help us fine-tune our understanding of the interplay between gas and galaxies and, ultimately, galaxy formation and evolution.
Prospecting for C IV at high redshifts
As the light from these distant objects propagates towards us, it encounters metals in the intervening IGM that superimpose absorption lines on the quasar’s spectra. By looking for metal absorption lines in the spectra of high redshifts quasars, we can learn about the metal content of the IGM. This paper by Simcoe et al. considers the spectra of 7 quasars with redshifts greater than 5.5. The moderate-resolution, near-infrared spectra were obtained over the past year with the FIRE spectrograph.
A Galactic-Scale Disappearing Act: Lyman-Break Galaxies at z ~ 8-9
Neutral hydrogen is very effective at absorbing radiation with wavelengths shorter than 91.2nm. This has become known as the Lyman limit. In this study, the authors use the Lyman-break technique to search for galaxies with z ~ 8 – 9. They use the latest Hubble WFC3 near-infrared data to look for large (Y-J) colors or, “Y-drops”, in a larger field than previous studies due to the camera’s larger field and better infrared sensitivity.
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