A catalog of candidates for the Galactic Worms that are possibly the walls surrounding the superbubbles is compiled; 118 isolated structures that appear both in HI and in IR (60 and 100{mu}m). 52 are possibly associated with HII regions. It is found that the 100-{mu}m emissivity increases systematically toward the Galactic interior, which is consistent with the increase of the general interstellar radiation field. The 100-{mu}m emissivity of the structures associated with the HII regions is larger than that of the structures without associated HII regions. The 60-100{mu}m ratio is large, 0.28+/-0.03, which may indicate that the grains associated with the atomic gas have a relatively large population of small grains. 35 structures appear in the 408MHz continuum. The IR and the radio continuum properties suggest that the 408MHz continuum emission in those structures is very likely thermal. The implications of these results on the ionization of gas far from the Galactic plane are discussed.
We have selected a sample of 876 galaxy candidates from the IRAS Point Source Catalog in the region of 2h<RA<10h and 0deg<DE<36deg, which crosses the Galactic anticenter part of the Zone of Avoidance (ZOA) and includes most of the highly obscured Orion-Taurus complex region. We have identified galaxies among the candidate sources by attempting to detect the 21cm H I line of those sources which were not known to be galaxies at the beginning of the survey. In this manner, we constructed a galaxy sample which is largely free from Galactic reddening. Of the 272 observed candidates, 89 were detected in the H I line up to a heliocentric velocity of v_h_~16,000km/s. The resulting galaxy sample of 717 galaxies is fairly complete (within about 10%) and uniform (within about 4%) in the part of the survey area 10deg away from the Galactic plane and for velocities up to at least 9000km/s. This provides, for the first time, a largely unbiased view on the large-scale structures in much of the survey area. Our main results are the following: (1) Several large voids are identified. In particular, a void between RA~3h and 4h, up to v_h_~6000km/s, separates the Pisces-Perseus supercluster at RA<3h from structures at RA>4h; and a "nearby void" occupies most of our survey area and reaches out to a redshift of nearly 3000km/s. (2) We found no nearby galaxy concentration that could significantly contribute to the "Local Velocity Anomaly" (LVA), but a general excess of galaxies around v_h_~5000km/s in the survey area. (3) The contrast between the "Great Wall" at v_h_~8500km/s and the void in front of it appears to gradually diffuse out after it enters the Zone of Avoidance from the northern Galactic hemisphere. (4) Our data combined with other galaxy surveys in or near the Galactic anticenter part of the ZOA suggest that the main ridge of the Pisces-Perseus supercluster does also not extend to Abell 569, a cluster in the northern Galactic hemisphere, and that the simple gravitational model consisting of the Local Void of Tully & Fisher, our nearby void, and Puppis and Fornax-Eridanus clusters would predict a LVA whose direction is probably too far away from that derived from observations.
We investigate the nature of objects in a complete sample of 28 galaxies selected from the first sky area fully covered by the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) survey, being well detected and having HI profiles wider than 550km/s. The selection does not use brightness, morphology or any other property derived from optical or other spectral bands. We investigate the degree of isolation, the morphology and other properties gathered or derived from open data bases and show that some objects have wide HI profiles probably because they are disturbed or are interacting, or might be confused in the ALFALFA beam.
We introduce the GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey (GASS), an on-going large programme that is gathering high quality HI-line spectra using the Arecibo radio telescope for an unbiased sample of ~1000 galaxies with stellar masses greater than 10^10^M_{sun}_ and redshifts 0.025<z<0.05, selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) spectroscopic and Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) imaging surveys. The galaxies are observed until detected or until a low gas mass fraction limit (1.5-5 per cent) is reached. This paper presents the first Data Release, consisting of ~20 per cent of the final GASS sample. We use this data set to explore the main scaling relations of the HI gas fraction with galaxy structure and NUV-r colour.
We present the second data release from the GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey (GASS), an ongoing large Arecibo program to measure the HI properties for an unbiased sample of ~1000 galaxies with stellar masses greater than 10^10^M_{sun}_ and redshifts 0.025<z<0.05. GASS targets are selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) spectroscopic and Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) imaging surveys, and are observed until detected or until a gas mass fraction limit of a few per cent is reached. This second data installment includes new Arecibo observations of 240 galaxies, and marks the 50% of the complete survey. We present catalogs of the HI, optical and ultraviolet parameters for these galaxies, and their HI-line profiles. Having more than doubled the size of the sample since the first data release, we also revisit the main scaling relations of the HI mass fraction with galaxy stellar mass, stellar mass surface density, concentration index, and NUV-r color, as well as the gas fraction plane introduced in our earlier work.
In recent years, ultrafaint dwarf (UFD) galaxies have been found through systematic searches of large optical surveys. However, the existence of Leo T, a nearby gas-rich dwarf, suggests that there could be other nearby UFDs that are optically obscured but have gas detectable at nonoptical wavelengths. With this in mind, we perform a search of the full Galactic Arecibo L-band Feed Array HI (GALFA-HI) survey, a radio survey that covers one-third of the sky at velocities -650<V_LSR_<+650km/s, for neutral hydrogen sources. We are able to probe regions of the sky at lower Galactic latitudes and smaller |V_LSR_| compared to previous explorations. We use the Source Finding Application on GALFA-HI and select all sources with similar properties to Leo T and other local dwarf galaxies. We find 690 dwarf galaxy candidates, one of which is particularly promising and likely a new galaxy near the Galactic plane (b=-8{deg}) that is comparable in velocity width and HI-flux to other recently discovered local volume galaxies. We find we are sensitive to Leo T-like objects out to 1Mpc at velocities clear from background HI emission. We check each candidate's corresponding optical fields from Pan-STARRS and fit stars drawn from isochrones, but find no evidence of stellar populations. We thus find no other Leo T-like dwarfs within 500 kpc of the Milky Way in the one-third of the sky covered by the GALFA-HI footprint, and discuss our nondetection in a cosmological context.
In this paper, we test if nearby blue spheroid (BSph) galaxies may become the progenitors of star-forming spiral galaxies or passively evolving elliptical galaxies. Our sample comprises 428 galaxies of various morphologies in the redshift range 0.002<z<0.02 (8-87Mpc) with panchromatic data from the Galaxy and Mass Assembly survey. We find that BSph galaxies are structurally (mean effective surface brightness, effective radius) very similar to their passively evolving red counterparts. However, their star formation and other properties such as colour, age, and metallicity are more like star-forming spirals than spheroids (ellipticals and lenticulars). We show that BSph galaxies are statistically distinguishable from other spheroids as well as spirals in the multidimensional space mapped by luminosity-weighted age, metallicity, dust mass, and specific star formation rate. We use HI data to reveal that some of the BSphs are (further) developing their discs, hence their blue colours. They may eventually become spiral galaxies - if sufficient gas accretion occurs - or more likely fade into low-mass red galaxies.
We quantify the gas accretion rate from minor mergers onto star-forming galaxies in the local Universe using HI observations of 148 nearby spiral galaxies (WHISP sample). We developed a dedicated code that iteratively analyses HI data-cubes, finds dwarf gas-rich satellites around larger galaxies, and estimates an upper limit to the gas accretion rate. We found that 22% of the galaxies have at least one detected dwarf companion. We made the very stringent assumption that all satellites are going to merge in the shortest possible time, transferring all their gas to the main galaxies. This leads to an estimate of the maximum gas accretion rate of 0.28M_{sun}_/yr, about five times lower than the average star formation rate of the sample. Given the assumptions, our accretion rate is clearly an overestimate. Our result strongly suggests that minor mergers do not play a significant role in the total gas accretion budget in local galaxies.
A study of the gas content in 1038 interacting galaxies, essentially selected from Arp (<VII/74>), Arp and Madore (<VII/170>), Vorontsov-Velyaminov (<VII/236>) catalogues and some of the published literature, is presented here. The data on the interstellar medium have been extracted from a number of sources in the literature and compared with a sample of 1916 normal galaxies. The mean values for each of the different ISM tracers (FIR, 21cm, CO lines, X-ray) have been estimated by means of survival analysis techniques, in order to take into account the presence of upper limits.
We present Arecibo neutral hydrogen data on a sample of optically selected dwarf galaxies. The sample ranges in H I mass from 10^6^ to 5x10^9^M_{sun}_, with a mean of 7.9x10^8^M_{sun}_. Using estimated H I radii, the H I surface densities range from 0.6 to 20M_{sun}_/pc^2^, all well below the critical threshold for star formation (Kennicutt, 1998ApJ...498..541K). M_HI_/L values of the LSB dwarfs range from 0.3 to 12 with a mean value of 2.0. Dynamical masses, calculated from the H I profile widths, range from 10^8^ to 10^11^M_{sun}_. There is a strong correlation between optical luminosity and dynamical mass for LSB dwarfs implying that the dark matter (whether baryonic or nonbaryonic) follows the detectable baryonic matter.
