Astro Seminar Series - VIA ZOOM

Alison Coil is a Professor of Physics and a member of the Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences in the Department of Physics at the University of California San Diego.  She is also an Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the Division of Physical Sciences.  She received her B.A. degree in Astrophysics from Princeton University in 1997 and her Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of California Berkeley in 2004.  She was a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Arizona before joining the faculty at the University of California San Diego.  She is an observational astronomer, and her research interests include the large-scale structure of the Universe, galaxy evolution, and feedback from stars and supermassive black holes. 

Talk Title and Abstract:

A 100 kpc Galactic Wind Feeding the Circumgalactic Medium

The origin of the metal-enriched and massive circumgalactic medium (CGM) remains elusive.  Theory points to expulsion from galaxies through outflowing winds as a dominant mechanism, but no directly-imaged winds reach far into the CGM. Using KCWI on Keck, we have discovered an enormous (100 kpc x 80 kpc) ionized gas outflow directly connecting the galactic wind from a massive, compact starburst galaxy at z~0.5 to its surrounding CGM.  This wind is depositing metal-enriched gas to over 20 times the stellar radius of the galaxy through an hourglass-shaped nebula. The outflow is one of the largest [O II] nebulae or galactic winds ever observed.  Multiple gas phases (ionized, neutral, and molecular) are also observed extending to 20 kpc moving at speeds up to ~1500 km/s.  This outflow may be feeding the CGM both by depositing gas directly and by entraining and cooling hot halo gas.  

Would you like to join this Zoom seminar?  Please email Donna Hayes.