Cardiff University | Prifysgol Caerdydd ORCA
Online Research @ Cardiff 
WelshClear Cookie - decide language by browser settings

OH absorption in the first quadrant of the Milky Way as seen by THOR

Rugel, M., Beuther, H., Bihr, S., Ott, J., Brunthaler, A., Walsh, A., Glover, S., Goldsmith, P., Anderson, L., Schneider, N., Menten, K., Ragan, Sarah ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4164-5588, Urquhart, J., Klessen, R., Soler, J., Roy, N., Kainulainen, J., Henning, T., Bigiel, F., Smith, R. and Longmore, S. 2018. OH absorption in the first quadrant of the Milky Way as seen by THOR. Astronomy and Astrophysics 618 , A159. 10.1051/0004-6361/201731872

[thumbnail of 1803.04794.pdf]
Preview
PDF - Accepted Post-Print Version
Download (3MB) | Preview

Abstract

The hydroxyl radical (OH) is present in the diffuse molecular and partially atomic phases of the interstellar medium (ISM), but its abundance relative to hydrogen is not clear. We aim to evaluate the abundance of OH with respect to molecular hydrogen using OH absorption against cm-continuum sources over the first Galactic quadrant. This OH study is part of the HI/OH/Recombination line survey (THOR). THOR is a Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array large program of atomic, molecular and ionized gas in the range 15{deg}≤l≤67{deg} and |b|≤1{deg}. It is the highest-resolution unbiased OH absorption survey to date towards this region. We combine the derived optical depths with literature 13CO(1-0) and HI observations to determine the OH abundance. We detect absorption in the 1665 and 1667 MHz transitions for continuum sources stronger than Fcont≥0.1 Jy/beam. OH absorption is found against ∼15% of these continuum sources with increasing fractions for stronger sources. Most of the absorption is associated with Galactic HII regions. We find OH and 13CO gas to have similar kinematic properties. The OH abundance decreases with increasing hydrogen column density. The OH abundance with respect to the total hydrogen nuclei column density (atomic and molecular phase) is in agreement with a constant abundance for AV < 10-20. Towards the lowest column densities, we find sources that exhibit OH absorption but no 13CO emission, indicating that OH is a well suited tracer of the low column density molecular gas. We present spatially resolved OH absorption towards W43. The unbiased nature of the THOR survey opens a new window onto the gas properties of the ISM. The characterization of the OH abundance over a large range of hydrogen gas column densities contributes to the understanding of OH as a molecular gas tracer and provides a starting point for future investigations.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Schools: Physics and Astronomy
Subjects: Q Science > QB Astronomy
Publisher: EDP Sciences
ISSN: 0004-6361
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 3 July 2018
Date of Acceptance: 3 March 2018
Last Modified: 17 Nov 2023 19:06
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/112765

Citation Data

Cited 13 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item Edit Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics