Publication Date:
2011-11-19
Description:
The circumgalactic medium (CGM) is fed by galaxy outflows and accretion of intergalactic gas, but its mass, heavy element enrichment, and relation to galaxy properties are poorly constrained by observations. In a survey of the outskirts of 42 galaxies with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph onboard the Hubble Space Telescope, we detected ubiquitous, large (150-kiloparsec) halos of ionized oxygen surrounding star-forming galaxies; we found much less ionized oxygen around galaxies with little or no star formation. This ionized CGM contains a substantial mass of heavy elements and gas, perhaps far exceeding the reservoirs of gas in the galaxies themselves. Our data indicate that it is a basic component of nearly all star-forming galaxies that is removed or transformed during the quenching of star formation and the transition to passive evolution.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Tumlinson, J -- Thom, C -- Werk, J K -- Prochaska, J X -- Tripp, T M -- Weinberg, D H -- Peeples, M S -- O'Meara, J M -- Oppenheimer, B D -- Meiring, J D -- Katz, N S -- Dave, R -- Ford, A B -- Sembach, K R -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2011 Nov 18;334(6058):948-52. doi: 10.1126/science.1209840.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA. tumlinson@stsci.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22096191" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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