Ha Emission from the Magellanic Bridge

Abstract

We present here a preliminary report and commentary of recently processed observations of Ha emission towards the Magellanic Bridge. These data have been analysed in an attempt to quantify the extent to which the stellar population is capable of reshaping the local ISM. We find that the Ha emission regions are small, weak and sparsely distributed, consistent with a relatively quiescent and inactive ISM where radiative and collisional ionisation is inefficient and sporadic. This suggests that energetic processes at the small scale (i.e. ~tens of pc) do not dominate the energy balance within the ISM of the Bridge, which therefore hosts a pristine turbulent structure, otherwise inaccessible within our own Galaxy. We find Ha emission that is well correlated with detected 12CO(1-0) line emission (a proxy for molecular hydrogen), as well as other easily identified ring-like HI features.

11 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in PASA

Cited by in corpus (9)

• A general catalogue of extended objects in the Magellanic System
• Star-formation in the HI bridge between M81 and M82
• Metallicity and Physical Conditions in the Magellanic Bridge
• The Dust-to-Gas Ratio in the Small Magellanic Cloud Tail
• Warm Ionized Gas Revealed in the Magellanic Bridge Tidal Remnant: Constraining the Baryon Content and the Escaping Ionizing Photons around Dwarf Galaxies
• Spitzer View of Massive Star Formation in the Tidally Stripped Magellanic Bridge
• Resolved star formation in the metal poor star-forming region Magellanic Bridge C
• ALMA resolves molecular clouds in the metal poor Magellanic Bridge A
• Discovery of O stars in the tidal Magellanic Bridge: Stellar parameters, abundances, and feedback of the nearest metal-poor massive stars and their implication for the Magellanic System ecology