The Ultraviolet Halos of Nearby Spiral Galaxies
Abstract
We developed a new method to study cool gas in spiral galaxy halos by measuring the light scattered by dust grains embedded in halo gas using GALEX and Swift. These halos are faint (a few percent of the galaxy luminosity) but ubiquitous and extend 10-20 kpc above the midplane of highly inclined galaxies, and their luminosities and spectral energy distributions tell us about the mass and metal content of the cool gas near the disk. Our ability to image the halos in nearby galaxies allows us to examine how these quantities change as a function of position around the galaxy. I will present a brief overview of the method and its potential as applied to several nearby edge-on galaxies with high quality data.
- Publication:
-
AAS/High Energy Astrophysics Division #14
- Pub Date:
- August 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014HEAD...1411008H