]

Paula Cleggett-Haleim
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
January 13, 1992
(Phone: 202/453-1547)
12:30 P.M. EST

Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
(Phone: 410/338-4514)

Dr. John Bahcall

Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J.
(Phone: 609/734-8054 )

RELEASE: 92-4

NEARBY HYDROGEN CLOUDS MAY BE ASSOCIATED WITH GALAXIES

Astronomers reported today that recent ultraviolet

observations with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) suggest
that what were thought to be randomly distributed, nearby
primordial clouds of hydrogen may actually be associated with
galaxies or clusters of galaxies.

"This is a revolutionary finding, if supported by future

observations," says Dr. John Bahcall of the Institute for
Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. "We would have never thought
of looking for this explanation if it hadn't kicked us in the
face."

Drs. Bahcall, Buell Jannuzi and Donald Schneider, all of the

Institute for Advanced Study, and George Hartig of the Space
Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md., announced their
results today to a press conference at the 179th meeting of the
American Astronomical Society in Atlanta.

For the past 2 decades, observations with ground-based

telescopes have shown that the spectra of high-redshift quasars
contain complex "thickets" of absorption features. These
absorption lines are unrelated to the quasars themselves, but are
attributed to invisible, intervening clouds of hydrogen gas which
absorb certain frequencies of a quasar's light.

Ground-based observations have shown that the number of

these clouds rapidly rises as one looks back in time, so it was
thought, says Hartig "that the number of nearby hydrogen clouds
was relatively small."
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Until the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), it was

impossible to directly measure the numbers of nearby clouds.
This unusual situation, understanding the distant clouds more
than the nearby ones, arose because, as Jannuzi explains, "The
recession velocity of the nearby clouds is so low that the
hydrogen absorption features occur in a part of the spectrum, the
far ultraviolet, that is inaccessible with ground-based
telescopes."

However, the HST dramatically changed this picture in 1991

when independent observations made with the HST's Faint Object
Spectrograph and Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph detected
more than a dozen hydrogen clouds within less than a billion
light-years of the Milky Way galaxy.

Astronomers have assumed that the clouds are strung along

the line-of-sight to a quasar, like beads on a string. The new
HST observations show that some absorption lines are more clumped
together than expected for randomly distributed material. In
addition, a few of the lines can be directly associated with
galaxies that lie along the line of sight to the quasar. This
suggests that the material producing the nearby hydrogen
absorption may be associated with individual galaxies or clusters
of galaxies.

The new results are based upon Faint Object Spectrograph

observations of a bright and relatively nearby, approximately 4
billion light-years distant, quasar H1821+643. "We are very
pleased with the quality of the data," says Hartig. This
spectrum shows a higher than expected number of extragalactic
absorption features, confirming the initial HST results.
 One grouping of lines in the complex spectrum has the same
redshift and hence, the same distance as the quasar. These types
of lines, called self-absorption systems, have been found in
high-redshift quasars and were thought to be produced by material
in the quasar itself. Schneider notes that "Recent ground-based
studies have shown that H1821+643 is surrounded by a large number
of galaxies, so it is possible that the self-absorption system is
caused by material belonging to the cluster or to an individual
cluster galaxy."

The HST observations provide additional evidence that the

absorption is associated with galaxies. A foreground galaxy that
lies along the line of sight to the quasar has the same distance
from Earth as does one of the cloud groupings. The cloud may be
located within 300,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy.
HST spectra of other nearby quasars are being obtained to see if
there is additional evidence of clumping of the hydrogen clouds
or if any other absorption systems can be identified as belonging
to galaxies. If so, then one of astronomy's many current
mysteries at last be may solved.
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