English

Does tiny-scale atomic structure exist in the interstellar medium ?

Astrophysics 2009-11-10 v1

Abstract

We report on preliminary results from the recent multi-epoch neutral hydrogen absorption measurements toward three pulsars, B0823+26, B1133+16 and B2016+28, using the Arecibo telescope. We do not find significant variations in optical depth profiles over periods of 0.3 and 9--10 yr, or on spatial scales of 10--20 and 70--85 AU. The large number of non detections of the tiny scale atomic structure suggests that the AU-sized structure is not ubiquitous in the interstellar medium and could be quite a rare phenomenon.

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0310238,
  title  = {Does tiny-scale atomic structure exist in the interstellar medium ?},
  author = {S. Stanimirovic and J. M. Weisberg and A. Hedden and K. E. Devine and J. T. Green and UC Berkeley; and Carleton College},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0310238},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

Accepted by ApJ Letters, 5 pages, 2 figures