Featured Image: Structures in the Interstellar Medium

This beautiful false-color image (which covers ~57 degrees²; click for the full view!) reveals structures in the hydrogen gas that makes up the diffuse atomic interstellar medium at intermediate latitudes in our galaxy. The image was created by representing three velocity channels with colors — red for gas moving at 7.59 km/s, green for 5.12 km/s, and blue for 2.64 km/s — and it shows the dramatically turbulent and filamentary structure of this gas. This image is one of many stunning, high-resolution observations that came out of the DRAO HI Intermediate Galactic Latitude Survey, a program that used the Synthesis Telescope at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in British Columbia to map faint hydrogen emission at intermediate latitudes in the Milky Way. The findings from the program were recently published in a study led by Kevin Blagrave (Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto); to find out more about what they learned, check out the paper below!

Citation

K. Blagrave et al 2017 ApJ 834 126. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/834/2/126