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Related papers: Summary of Recent Progress in Understanding HVCs

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We report the first determination of a distance bracket for the high-velocity cloud (HVC) complex C. Combined with previous measurements showing that this cloud has a metallicity of 0.15 times solar, these results provide ample evidence…

We present a new measurement, 0.85-3.5 Z_solar, of the metallicity of high velocity cloud (HVC) Complex M by analyzing ultraviolet spectroscopic observations of the blazar Mrk 421 taken with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on the Hubble…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-05-27 Yangsen Yao , J. Michael Shull , Charles W. Danforth

High-velocity clouds (HVCs) are composed of neutral hydrogen (HI) moving at velocities that deviate from the general rotational motion of the Milky Way. Currently, the origins of the HVCs remain poorly known due to the difficulty in…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-04-15 Xiao-Lan Liu , Jin-Long Xu , Peng Jiang , Ming Zhu , Chuan-Peng Zhang , Naiping Yu , Ye Xu , Xin Guan , Jun-Jie Wang

High velocity gas that does not conform to Galactic rotation is observed throughout the Galaxy's halo. One component of this gas, HI high velocity clouds (HVCs), have attracted attention since their discovery in the 1960s and remain…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-08-24 Asger Grønnow , Thor Tepper-García , Joss Bland-Hawthorn , Naomi McClure-Griffiths

Significant numbers of high-velocity HI clouds (HVCs) have now been detected in H-alpha, with a subset seen in low ionization lines (e.g. [NII]). It was originally hoped that the observed H-alpha strength would provide a distance constraint…

Astrophysics · Physics 2011-03-10 J. Bland-Hawthorn , M. E. Putman

High-velocity clouds (HVCs) are neutral or ionised gas clouds in the vicinity of the Milky Way that are characterised by high radial velocities inconsistent with participation in the regular rotation of the Galactic disc. Previous attempts…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-12-05 Tobias Westmeier

High-velocity clouds (HVCs) in the Galactic center have garnered significant attention due to their mysterious formation, potentially linked to starburst events or supermassive black hole activity in the region. However, it remains…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-02-25 Mengfei Zhang , Miao Li , Peixin Zhu

Traditionally IVC and HVC were defined to be concentrations of HI gas, with line-of-sight velocities that are inconsistent with data on the differential rotation of the Galaxy. We demonstrate that IVCs and HVCs can be identified from…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Urmas Haud

We have recently used the Hubble Space Telescope to study a pair of high velocity clouds in the direction of Mrk 509 that have unusual ionization properties. They exhibit strong CIV absorption with little or no low ion absorption or HI 21cm…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Kenneth R. Sembach , Blair D. Savage , Limin Lu , Edward M. Murphy

We compare existing high spectral resolution (R=40,000) CaII K observations towards 88 mainly B-type stars, and new observations at R=10,000 towards 3 stars, with 21-cm HI emission-line profiles, in order to search for optical absorption…

The origin of our Galaxy's high-velocity clouds (HVCs) remains a mystery after many decades of effort. In this paper, we use the TNG50 simulation of the IllustrisTNG project to identify cool, dense clouds that match observations of Galactic…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-10-21 Scott Lucchini , Jiwon Jesse Han , Lars Hernquist , Charlie Conroy

We have identified a class of high-velocity clouds which are compact and apparently isolated. The clouds are compact in that they have angular sizes less than 2 degrees FWHM. They are isolated in that they are separated from neighboring…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 R. Braun , W. B. Burton

To explore the origin of high-velocity gas in the direction of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) we analyze absorption lines in the ultraviolet spectrum of a Galactic halo star that is located in front of the LMC at d=9.2 kpc distance. We…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-11-18 P. Richter , K. S. de Boer , K. Werner , T. Rauch

FAST HI observations reveal unprecedented internal structures of the high-velocity cloud AC-III, which is found to consist of several coherent subclumps (D1-D6) with nearly constant line widths of $\sim 20~\mathrm{km~s^{-1}}$, while the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-10-31 Xunchuan Liu

We present deep HI observations of three compact high-velocity clouds (CHVCs). The main goal is to study their diffuse warm gas and compact cold cores. We use both low- and high-resolution data obtained with the 100 m Effelsberg telescope…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-18 Shahram Faridani , Lars Flöer , Jürgen Kerp , Tobias Westmeier

High-velocity clouds (HVCs), which are gas clouds moving at high velocity relative to the galactic disk, may play a critical role in galaxy evolution, potentially supplying gas to the disk and triggering star formation. In this study, we…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-07-02 Maki Nagata , Fumi Egusa , Fumiya Maeda , Kazuki Tokuda , Kotaro Kohno , Kana Morokuma-Matsui , Jin Koda

We have recently identified several high velocity (V < -100 km/s) clouds in the directions of Mrk 509 and PKS 2155-304 that have unusual ionization properties. The clouds exhibit strong C IV absorption with little or no detectable low ion…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-30 Kenneth R. Sembach , Blair D. Savage , Limin Lu , Edward M. Murphy

We study the hypothesis that high-velocity clouds (HVCs) may originate from instabilities within the gaseous phase of the Galactic halo. According to the hydrostatic equilibrium model of Kalberla & Kerp (1998), we determine the probability…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 P. M. W. Kalberla , J. Kerp , U. Haud

Models that reproduce the observed high-velocity clouds (HVCs) also predict clouds at lower radial velocities that may easily be confused with Galactic disk (|z| < 1 kpc) gas. We describe the first search for these low-velocity halo clouds…

Astrophysics · Physics 2011-02-11 J. E. G. Peek , Carl Heiles , M. E. Putman , Kevin A. Douglas

We study the physical conditions, elemental abundances, and kinematics of the high-velocity clouds (HVCs) along the sight lines toward active galaxies HE0226-4110 and PG0953+414 using Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and Far…