The structure of the local hot bubble

Wenhao Liu (1) , Meng Chiao (2) , Michael R. Collier (2) , Thomas Cravens (3) , Massimiliano Galeazzi (1) , Dimitra Koutroumpa (4) , Kip D. Kuntz (5) , Rosine Lallement (6) , Susan T. Lepri (7) , Dan Mccammon (8) , Kelsey Morgan (8) , Frederick Scott Porter (2) , Steven L. Snowden (2) , Nicholas Evan Thomas (2) , Youaraj Uprety (1, 9) , Eugenio Ursino (1, 10) , Brian Walsh (11)

1 Department of Physics [Coral Gables]
2 GSFC - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
3 Department of Physics and Astronomy [Lawrence Kansas]
4 HELIOS - LATMOS
5 Department of Physics and Astronomy [Baltimore]
6 GEPI - Galaxies, Etoiles, Physique, Instrumentation
7 AOSS - Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Space Sciences [Ann Arbor]
8 Department of Physics [Madison]
9 Department of Physics and Astronomy [Murfreesboro]
10 Department of Physics [Grinnell]
11 Department of Mechanical Engineering [Boston]

DXL (Diffuse X-rays from the Local Galaxy) is a sounding rocket mission designed to quantify and characterize the contribution of Solar Wind Charge eXchange (SWCX) to the Diffuse X-ray Background and study the properties of the Local Hot Bubble (LHB). Based on the results from the DXL mission, we quantified and removed the contribution of SWCX to the diffuse X-ray background measured by the ROSAT All Sky Survey (RASS). The "cleaned" maps were used to investigate the physical properties of the LHB. Assuming thermal ionization equilibrium, we measured a highly uniform temperature distributed around kT=0.097 keV+/-0.013 keV (FWHM)+/-0.006 keV (systematic). We also generated a thermal emission measure map and used it to characterize the three-dimensional (3D) structure of the LHB which we found to be in good agreement with the structure of the local cavity measured from dust and gas.

Keywords: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena; ISM; bubbles; X-rays

Domains: Solar and Stellar Astrophysics [astro-ph.SR]; Physics [physics]; Astrophysics [astro-ph]

Wenhao Liu, Meng Chiao, Michael R. Collier, Thomas Cravens, Massimiliano Galeazzi, et al.. The structure of the local hot bubble. The Astrophysical Journal, 2017, 834 (1), pp.art. 33. ⟨10.3847/1538-4357/834/1/33⟩. ⟨insu-01399545⟩