Stellar Lyα Emission Lines in the Hubble Space Telescope Archive: Intrinsic Line Fluxes and Absorption from the Heliosphere and Astrospheres

We search the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) archive for previously unanalyzed observations of stellar H I Lyα emission lines, our primary purpose being to look for new detections of Lyα absorption from the outer heliosphere and to also search for analogous absorption from the astrospheres surrounding the observed stars. The astrospheric absorption is of particular interest because it can be used to study solar-like stellar winds that are otherwise undetectable. We find and analyze 33 HST Lyα spectra in the archive. All the spectra were taken with the E140M grating of the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) instrument on board HST. The HST STIS spectra yield four new detections of heliospheric absorption (70 Oph, ξ Boo, 61 Vir, and HD 165185) and seven new detections of astrospheric absorption (EV Lac, 70 Oph, ξ Boo, 61 Vir, δ Eri, HD 128987, and DK UMa), doubling the previous number of heliospheric and astrospheric detections. When combined with previous results, 10 of 17 lines of sight within 10 pc yield detections of astrospheric absorption. This high detection fraction implies that most of the ISM within 10 pc must be at least partially neutral, since the presence of H I within the ISM surrounding the observed star is necessary for an astrospheric detection. In contrast, the detection percentage is only 9.7% (3 out of 31) for stars beyond 10 pc. Our Lyα analyses provide measurements of ISM H I and D I column densities for all 33 lines of sight, and we discuss some implications of these results. Finally, we measure chromospheric Lyα fluxes from the observed stars. We use these fluxes to determine how Lyα flux correlates with coronal X-ray and chromospheric Mg II emission, and we also study how Lyα emission depends on stellar rotation.

Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555.