From Remnants to Reason:

What Powers the Galaxy?

he dark region of the night sky which occupies space between the stars is not a perfect vacuum; but rather, it is lled with a dilute mixture of neutral and ionized gasses, dust particles, and cosmic rays that comprise the interstellar medium (ISM). e majority of these particles are the remnants of star deaths including supernovaethe massive explosions that mark the death of large stars which eject energy and matter into space. By studying the ISM in the Milky Way, scientists hope to be able to answer important questions about the history of our galaxy and the nature of the mechanisms that govern its motion.

e Wisconsin H Mapper (WHAM) is a custom-built observatory that was dedicated to the rst kinematic survey of the di use ionized gas in our galaxy by observing ionized hydrogens unique H emission. e instrument, which excels in observations of faint, di use optical emission, consists of a siderostat with a 60 centimeter primary lens coupled with a 15 centimeter spectrometer that were designed and built in collaboration with the UW-Madison Physical Sciences Laboratory and the UW-Madison Space Astronomy Laboratory.

e project was commissioned at the Pine Blu e most abundant element is hydrogen which comprises nearly three Observatory in Wisconsin in 1996. quarters of the entire universes elemental mass. By the 1970s-80s, radio In November of that year, the astronomers had provided a fairly ! conclusive map of all of the neutral WHAM produced hydrogen within the Milky Way. the rst full northern sky map of However, it wasnt until the advent of modern charge-coupled devices H emission before the end of in the 1990s that high-resolution the millennium. imaging of ionized gas was possible. ! One component of the ISM which has since gained interest is the thick layer of gas containing a high fraction of ionized hydrogen (HII) known as the warm ionized medium (WIM). In order for hydrogen to become ionized, it needs to absorb a su cient amount of energy. Most stars in our galaxy are capable of heating gas to high temperatures, but only the hottest, most massive stars are able to ionize the gas. is would suggest that ionized hydrogen would only be found in high concentration surrounding massive stars in what are known as classical HII regions, or nebulae. In the early 1990s, however, a group at UWMadison sought out to determine the exact makeup of ionized hydrogen in the Milky Way, and their results were surprising.

instrument was installed at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona where it joined one of the most diverse groups of astronomical instruments in the world. Although it was located over 1700 miles away, nearly all of the research was conducted remotely from Madison. According to Matt Ha ner, now the lead principle investigator of the WHAM project, e guy who started this was Ron Reynolds. He is an emeritus professor now. I think it was more in the back of his mind that [remote handling] would be a nice way to run this. However, he actually had in the budget that a grad student would go down to Arizona for two weeks every month and perform the actual observations. Ha ner says, Well, I happened to be that graduate student. I like taking trips, and Id taken plenty to get [WHAM] going, but I was more interested in trying to get the remote stu working. In response, Reynolds and Ha ner worked closely with UW-Madison engineers Je Percival and Kurt Jaehnig to design, fabricate, and build novel, robust systems that would be remotely accessible. As a result, WHAM is a largely custom instrument with very few o -the-shelf parts. WHAM produced the rst full northern sky map of H emission before the end of the millennium.

WHAMs northern sky survey showed the distribution of ionized gas in the Milky Way to be detectable in nearly every direction and characterized by rich lament structures. e WIM is not regularly distributed. Ha ner says, When we [go] out and look with sensitive telescopes, were nding ionized gas everywhere. Its not even in little balls or clumps. We see H emission in every part of the sky, so that tells us something about our initial picture that is not right. Although the denser classical HII regions contribute a signi cant portion of H radiation, the WIM contains most of the ionized gas in the Milky Way. In order to create this turbulent picture, explosions like supernovae likely play an important role in the Galactic makeup of ionized gas. e explosions cause gaps in the smooth distribution of hydrogen in the WIM, and this allows high-energy photons from hot, young stars to travel far from their source and ionize gas a great distance away.

H[alpha] emission spectrum of the Milky Way

For a gas to be ionized, it needs to be constantly energized. From a rst order description where hydrogen is smoothly distributed around a starone would expect to nd a bubble of HII around the star known as a Strmgren sphere. However,

Working with powerful computer programs, scientists are now able to simulate environments on scales similar to that which WHAM can see. Ha ner says, We have models on the theory side of taking the gas and trying to create structures that are more realistic from using supernovae mixing things up and putting them into hydrodynamic simulations to see what the resulting gas structure is. en you put the stars in, turn them on, and ask the question of how far ionization is possible now that the medium is no longer smooth. In this manner astronomers are able to shed new light on what is powering our galaxy. In 2009, WHAM was shipped to Chile and installed at the Cerro Tololo International American Observatory where it would obtain H data for the portion of the sky not visible from the northern hemisphere. Data collection was nished by 2011, and by February 2012, over 90 percent of the data had been reduced. From its location in Chile, WHAM is now able to collect data from the Large and Small Magellanic Cloudsirregular dwarf galaxies which orbit the Milky Way and are not visible from the northern hemisphere. Upon completion of the full sky survey, WHAM will turn its sights on the Magellanic Clouds to explore the complex, extended gas systems with which they are associated. WHAM is an ambitious program which is helping to paint a more accurate picture of the universe. It has been funded in large part by the National Science Foundation, and it continues to produce new information and uncover secrets about the mercurial galaxy that we inhabit. Article by: Matt Treske Design by: Ryan Krull Photography by: Tyler Van Fossen

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