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Updated: Jun 7, 2025

Scattering And Absorption of Light in Planetary Regoliths
Published on: July 1, 2019
A MUSE source-blind survey for emission from the circumgalactic medium
Huanian Zhang1,2, Dennis Zaritsky2
1Department of Astronomy, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China.
Abstract:
The recent detection of optical emission lines from the circumgalactic medium (CGM) in combined, large samples of low-redshift, normal galaxy spectra hints at the potential to map the cool (∼104 kelvin) CGM in individual, representative galaxies. Using archival data from a forefront instrument (MUSE) on the VLT, we present a source-blind, wide-redshift-range (z ∼ 0 to 5) narrowband imaging survey for CGM emission. Our detected, resolved emission line sources are cataloged and include a 30-kiloparsec-wide Hα source likely tracing the CGM of a low-mass galaxy (stellar mass ∼ 108.78±0.42 solar mass) at z = 0.1723, a 60-kiloparsec-wide Ly α structure associated with a galaxy at z = 3.9076, and a 130-kiloparsec (∼r)-wide [O II] feature revealing an interaction between a galaxy pair at z = 1.2480. The Hα velocity field for the low-mass galaxy suggests that the CGM is more chaotic or turbulent than the galaxy disk, while that for the interacting galaxies shows large-scale (∼50 kiloparsec) coherent motions.
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