Jason Tumlinson, Christopher Thom, Jessica K. Werk, J. Xavier Prochaska, Todd M. Tripp, David H. Weinberg, Molly S. Peeples, John M. O'Meara, Benjamin D. Oppenheimer, Joseph D. Meiring, Neal S. Katz, Romeel Dave, Amanda Brady Ford, Kenneth R. Sembach
The circumgalactic medium (CGM) is fed by galaxy outflows and accretion of
intergalactic gas, but its mass, heavy element enrichment, and relation to
galaxy properties are poorly constrained by observations. In a survey of the
outskirts of 42 galaxies with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph onboard the
Hubble Space Telescope, we detected ubiquitous, large (150 kiloparsec) halos of
ionized oxygen surrounding star-forming galaxies, but we find much less ionized
oxygen around galaxies with little or no star formation. This ionized CGM
contains a substantial mass of heavy elements and gas, perhaps far exceeding
the reservoirs of gas in the galaxies themselves. It is a basic component of
nearly all star-forming galaxies that is removed or transformed during the
quenching of star formation and the transition to passive evolution.
View original:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3980
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