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S. V. Penton, J. T. Stocke, J. M. Shull (CASA, U. Colorado)
The HST+GHRS combination has given us our first views of Ly\alpha absorption systems in the very low-redshift universe (c < 0.07, cz \le 20,000\ km s-1). I will review thesis work in which I recalibrate and examine 15 G160M sightlines from the geocoronal cutoff of 1218Å\ to 1300Å\ (0.002 < z < 0.07). Together, these sightlines sample 138,000 km s-1 of the local universe, of which \approx 50% represent pathlength through galaxy voids. I will review the distribution of the detected Ly\alpha absorptions in these sightlines in terms of void vs cluster/filament statistics, two-point correlation function along individual sightlines, and nearest galaxy neighbor statistics. I will also discuss the absorption density dN/dz (the number of detected absorbers (N) versus pathlength (z), corrected for a variety of observation effects), as well as the distribution of Ly\alpha absorbers in column density (NH).
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: spenton@casa.colorado.edu