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W. V. Dixon, S. Sallmen, M. Hurwitz (UCB/SSL), R. Lieu (UAH)
We report a detection of diffuse emission from O VI \lambda \lambda 1032, 1038 in a 29 ksec observation of a 30\arcsec\ \times 30\arcsec\ region of the sky centered on the Coma Cluster (l = 57.6, b = +88.0) with FUSE, the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer. The emission lines have a redshift near zero and were thus produced by hot gas in our own galaxy, either in the Local Bubble or in the Galactic halo. The line of sight is far enough from the North Polar Spur (Radio Loop I) that contamination from this feature is unlikely. Observed surface brightnesses of the O VI 1032 and 1038 Å\ emission lines are 2000 ±500 and 1900 ±500 photons cm-2 s-1 sr-1, respectively. These features are similar in strength to, though less significant than, those observed by Shelton et al. (2000) towards l = 315.0, b = -41.3 in a 200 ksec observation with FUSE. The detection of O VI emission in a relatively short exposure with FUSE bodes well for the success of future efforts to map the sky at this wavelength.
This research is supported by the FUSE Guest Investigator Program.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: vand@ssl.berkeley.edu