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“Recent Results From GALFA: 'GoldenEye' On Disk/halo Interfaces.” Professor Snezana Stanimirovic University of Wisconsin Madison |
| The consortium for Galactic studies with the Arecibo L-band Feed Array (GALFA) is undertaking a large Galactic HI survey with a great potential for tracing the link between the Galactic disk and the halo at high angular resolution of 3 arcmin. GALFA's precursor observations of a region in the Galactic anti-center reveal numerous isolated, small (a few pc in size), and cold (T<400 K) HI clouds at low negative velocities, distinctly separated from the HI disk emission. These clouds are located in the transition region between the Galactic disk and halo (at scale heights of 60--600 pc), yet they have properties of typical cold neutral clouds. These observations clearly demonstrate that the cloudy structure of the interface region is most likely a general phenomenon, not restricted to the inner Galaxy. I will discuss several possible mechanisms that could maintain this 'frothy' medium, and how we can use GALFA observations to learn about building habits of galaxies in general. |