647 research outputs found
Direct Estimate of Cirrus Noise in Herschel Hi-GAL Images
In Herschel images of the Galactic plane and many star forming regions, a
major factor limiting our ability to extract faint compact sources is cirrus
confusion noise, operationally defined as the "statistical error to be expected
in photometric measurements due to confusion in a background of fluctuating
surface brightness". The histogram of the flux densities of extracted sources
shows a distinctive faint-end cutoff below which the catalog suffers from
incompleteness and the flux densities become unreliable. This empirical cutoff
should be closely related to the estimated cirrus noise and we show that this
is the case. We compute the cirrus noise directly, both on Herschel images from
which the bright sources have been removed and on simulated images of cirrus
with statistically similar fluctuations. We connect these direct estimates with
those from power spectrum analysis, which has been used extensively to predict
the cirrus noise and provides insight into how it depends on various
statistical properties and photometric operational parameters. We report
multi-wavelength power spectra of diffuse Galactic dust emission from Hi-GAL
observations at 70 to 500 microns within Galactic plane fields at l= 30 degrees
and l= 59 degrees. We find that the exponent of the power spectrum is about -3.
At 250 microns, the amplitude of the power spectrum increases roughly as the
square of the median brightness of the map and so the expected cirrus noise
scales linearly with the median brightness. Generally, the confusion noise will
be a worse problem at longer wavelengths, because of the combination of lower
angular resolution and the rising power spectrum of cirrus toward lower spatial
frequencies, but the photometric signal to noise will also depend on the
relative spectral energy distribution of the source compared to the cirrus.Comment: 4 pages (in journal), 3 figures, Astronomy and Astrophysics, accepted
for publication 13 May 201
Statistical properties of dust far-infrared emission
The description of the statistical properties of dust emission gives
important constraints on the physics of the interstellar medium but it is also
a useful way to estimate the contamination of diffuse interstellar emission in
the cases where it is considered a nuisance. The main goals of this analysis of
the power spectrum and non-Gaussian properties of 100 micron dust emission are
1) to estimate the power spectrum of interstellar matter density in three
dimensions, 2) to review and extend previous estimates of the cirrus noise due
to dust emission and 3) to produce simulated dust emission maps that reproduce
the observed statistical properties. The main results are the following. 1) The
cirrus noise level as a function of brightness has been previously
overestimated. It is found to be proportional to instead of ^1.5, where
is the local average brightness at 100 micron. This scaling is in
accordance with the fact that the brightness fluctuation level observed at a
given angular scale on the sky is the sum of fluctuations of increasing
amplitude with distance on the line of sight. 2) The spectral index of dust
emission at scales between 5 arcmin and 12.5 degrees is =-2.9 on average
but shows significant variations over the sky. Bright regions have
systematically steeper power spectra than diffuse regions. 3) The skewness and
kurtosis of brightness fluctuations is high, indicative of strong
non-Gaussianity. 4) Based on our characterization of the 100 micron power
spectrum we provide a prescription of the cirrus confusion noise as a function
of wavelength and scale. 5) Finally we present a method based on a modification
of Gaussian random fields to produce simulations of dust maps which reproduce
the power spectrum and non-Gaussian properties of interstellar dust emission.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures. Accepted for publication in A&
An Imprint of Molecular Cloud Magnetization in the Morphology of the Dust Polarized Emission
We describe a morphological imprint of magnetization found when considering
the relative orientation of the magnetic field direction with respect to the
density structures in simulated turbulent molecular clouds. This imprint was
found using the Histogram of Relative Orientations (HRO): a new technique that
utilizes the gradient to characterize the directionality of density and column
density structures on multiple scales. We present results of the HRO analysis
in three models of molecular clouds in which the initial magnetic field
strength is varied, but an identical initial turbulent velocity field is
introduced, which subsequently decays. The HRO analysis was applied to the
simulated data cubes and mock-observations of the simulations produced by
integrating the data cube along particular lines of sight. In the 3D analysis
we describe the relative orientation of the magnetic field with
respect to the density structures, showing that: 1.The magnetic field shows a
preferential orientation parallel to most of the density structures in the
three simulated cubes. 2.The relative orientation changes from parallel to
perpendicular in regions with density over a critical density in the
highest magnetization case. 3.The change of relative orientation is largest for
the highest magnetization and decreases in lower magnetization cases. This
change in the relative orientation is also present in the projected maps. In
conjunction with simulations HROs can be used to establish a link between the
observed morphology in polarization maps and the physics included in
simulations of molecular clouds.Comment: (16 pages, 11 figures, submitted to ApJ 05MAR2013, accepted
07JUL2013
Low-Velocity Halo Clouds
Models that reproduce the observed high-velocity clouds (HVCs) also predict
clouds at lower radial velocities that may easily be confused with Galactic
disk (|z| < 1 kpc) gas. We describe the first search for these low-velocity
halo clouds (LVHCs) using IRAS data and the initial data from the Galactic
Arecibo L-band Feed Array survey in HI (GALFA-HI). The technique is based upon
the expectation that such clouds should, like HVCs, have very limited infrared
thermal dust emission as compared to their HI column density. We describe our
'displacement-map' technique for robustly determining the dust-to-gas ratio of
clouds and the associated errors that takes into account the significant
scatter in the infrared flux from the Galactic disk gas. We find that there
exist lower-velocity clouds that have extremely low dust-to-gas ratios,
consistent with being in the Galactic halo - candidate LVHCs. We also confirm
the lack of dust in many HVCs with the notable exception of complex M, which we
consider to be the first detection of warm dust in HVCs. We do not confirm the
previously reported detection of dust in complex C. In addition, we find that
most Intermediate- and Low-Velocity clouds that are part of the Galactic disk
have a higher 60 micron/100 micron flux ratio than is typically seen in
Galactic HI, which is consistent with a previously proposed picture in which
fast-moving Galactic clouds have smaller, hotter dust grains.Comment: 30 pages, 7 figures. Accepted to the Ap
Dust-Gas Scaling Relations and OH Abundance in the Galactic ISM
Observations of interstellar dust are often used as a proxy for total gas
column density . By comparing thermal dust data
(Release 1.2) and new dust reddening maps from Pan-STARRS 1 and 2MASS (Green et
al. 2018), with accurate (opacity-corrected) HI column densities and
newly-published OH data from the Arecibo Millennium survey and 21-SPONGE, we
confirm linear correlations between dust optical depth , reddening
and the total proton column density in the range
(130)10cm, along sightlines with no molecular gas
detections in emission. We derive an / ratio of
(9.41.6)10cmmag for purely atomic sightlines
at 5, which is 60 higher than the canonical value of
Bohlin et al. (1978). We report a 40 increase in opacity
=/, when moving from the low column
density (510cm) to moderate column
density (510cm) regime, and suggest that
this rise is due to the evolution of dust grains in the atomic ISM. Failure to
account for HI opacity can cause an additional apparent rise in ,
of the order of a further 20. We estimate molecular hydrogen column
densities from our derived linear relations, and hence
derive the OH/H abundance ratio of 110
for all molecular sightlines. Our results show no evidence of systematic trends
in OH abundance with in the range
(0.110)10cm. This suggests
that OH may be used as a reliable proxy for H in this range, which includes
sightlines with both CO-dark and CO-bright gas.Comment: The revised manuscript is accepted for publication in The
Astrophysical Journa
Correlated Anisotropies in the Cosmic Far-Infrared Background Detected by MIPS/Spitzer: Constraint on the Bias
We report the detection of correlated anisotropies in the Cosmic Far-Infrared
Background at 160 microns. We measure the power spectrum in the Spitzer/SWIRE
Lockman Hole field. It reveals unambiguously a strong excess above cirrus and
Poisson contributions, at spatial scales between 5 and 30 arcminutes,
interpreted as the signature of infrared galaxy clustering. Using our model of
infrared galaxy evolution we derive a linear bias b=1.74 \pm 0.16. It is a
factor 2 higher than the bias measured for the local IRAS galaxies. Our model
indicates that galaxies dominating the 160 microns correlated anisotropies are
at z~1. This implies that infrared galaxies at high redshifts are biased
tracers of mass, unlike in the local Universe.Comment: ApJ Letters, in pres
Structure formation in a colliding flow: The Herschel view of the Draco nebula
The Draco nebula is a high Galactic latitude interstellar cloud likely to
have been formed by the collision of a Galactic halo cloud entering the disk of
the Milky Way. Such conditions are ideal to study the formation of cold and
dense gas in colliding flows of warm gas. We present Herschel-SPIRE
observations that reveal the fragmented structure of the interface between the
infalling cloud and the Galactic layer. This front is characterized by a
Rayleigh-Taylor instability structure. From the determination of the typical
length of the periodic structure (2.2 pc) we estimated the gas kinematic
viscosity and the turbulence dissipation scale (0.1 pc) that is compatible with
that expected if ambipolar diffusion is the main mechanism of energy
dissipation in the WNM. The small-scale structures of the nebula are typical of
that seen in some molecular clouds. The gas density has a log-normal
distribution with an average value of cm. The size of the
structures is 0.1-0.2 pc but this estimate is limited by the resolution of the
observations. The mass ranges from 0.2 to 20 M and the distribution
of the more massive clumps follows a power law . We
identify a mass-size relation with the same exponent as that found in GMCs
() but only 15% of the mass of the cloud is in gravitationally
bound structures. We conclude that the increase of pressure in the collision is
strong enough to trigger the WNM-CNM transition caused by the interplay between
turbulence and thermal instability as self-gravity is not dominating the
dynamics.Comment: 16 pages, A&A, in pres
Magnetic field morphology in nearby molecular clouds as revealed by starlight and submillimetre polarization
Within four nearby (d < 160 pc) molecular clouds, we statistically evaluate
the structure of the interstellar magnetic field, projected on the plane of the
sky and integrated along the line of sight, as inferred from the polarized
thermal emission of Galactic dust observed by Planck at 353 GHz and from the
optical and NIR polarization of background starlight. We compare the dispersion
of the field orientation directly in vicinities with an area equivalent to that
subtended by the Planck effective beam at 353 GHz (10') and using the
second-order structure functions of the field orientation angles. We find that
the average dispersion of the starlight-inferred field orientations within
10'-diameter vicinities is less than 20 deg, and that at these scales the mean
field orientation is on average within 5 deg of that inferred from the
submillimetre polarization observations in the considered regions. We also find
that the dispersion of starlight polarization orientations and the polarization
fractions within these vicinities are well reproduced by a Gaussian model of
the turbulent structure of the magnetic field, in agreement with the findings
reported by the Planck collaboration at scales greater than 10' and for
comparable column densities. At scales greater than 10', we find differences of
up to 14.7 deg between the second-order structure functions obtained from
starlight and submillimetre polarization observations in the same positions in
the plane of the sky, but comparison with a Gaussian model of the turbulent
structure of the magnetic field indicates that these differences are small and
are consistent with the difference in angular resolution between both
techniques.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, submitted to A&
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