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Session 44 - The Local Diffuse ISM.
Display session, Tuesday, June 11
Great Hall,
We construct the first detailed three-dimensional models of the Local Interstellar Cloud (LIC) and the total amount of warm gas in the local interstellar medium (LISM) within 10 parsecs of the Sun. These models are based on the amount of neutral hydrogen gas deduced (a) from measurements of the deuterium column density toward nearby late-type stars, obtained from the analysis of Hubble Space Telescope spectra, and (b) from the spectra of hot white dwarf stars measured with the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer satellite. The two methods give consistent results. We find that the LIC is flattened in the Galactic plane and that the hydrogen column densities are very similar for stars located in the sky within 12^\circ, indicating the angular scale of the gas close to the Sun. The direction of minimum hydrogen absorption through the LISM is near Galactic longitude l=262^\circ and latitude b=+22^\circ.
This work is supported by NASA Grant S-56460-D.
