David B. Henley — Page 2

arXiv2007

Suzaku Observations of the Soft X-ray Background

We have analyzed a pair of Suzaku XIS1 spectra of the soft X-ray background, obtained by observing towards and to the side of a nearby (d = 230 pc) absorbing filament in the southern Galactic hemisphere. We fit multicomponent spectral models to the spectra in order to separate the foreground emission due to the Local Bubble (LB) from the background emission due to the Galactic halo and unresolved AGN. We obtain LB and halo parameters that are different from those obtained from our analysis of XMM-Newton spectra from these same directions. The LB temperature is lower (log T = 5.93 versus 6.06), and the flux due to the LB in the Suzaku band is an order of magnitude less than is expected from our XMM-Newton analysis. The halo components, meanwhile, are hotter than previously determined, implying our Suzaku spectra are harder than our XMM-Newton spectra.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2007

An XMM-Newton Observation of the Local Bubble Using a Shadowing Filament in the Southern Galactic Hemisphere

We present an analysis of the X-ray spectrum of the Local Bubble, obtained by simultaneously analyzing spectra from two XMM-Newton pointings on and off an absorbing filament in the Southern galactic hemisphere (b ~ -45 deg). We use the difference in the Galactic column density in these two directions to deduce the contributions of the unabsorbed foreground emission due to the Local Bubble, and the absorbed emission from the Galactic halo and the extragalactic background. We find the Local Bubble emission is consistent with emission from a plasma in collisional ionization equilibrium with a temperature $\log T_{LB} = 6.06^{+0.02}_{-0.04}$ and an emission measure of 0.018 cm^{-6} pc. Our measured temperature is in good agreement with values obtained from ROSAT All-Sky Survey data, but is lower than that measured by other recent XMM-Newton observations of the Local Bubble, which find $\log T_{LB} \approx 6.2$ (although for some of these observations it is possible that the foreground emission is contaminated by non-Local Bubble emission from Loop I). The higher temperature observed towards other directions is inconsistent with our data, when combined with a FUSE measurement of the Galactic halo O VI intensity. This therefore suggests that the Local Bubble is thermally anisotropic. Our data are unable to rule out a non-equilibrium model in which the plasma is underionized. However, an overionized recombining plasma model, while observationally acceptable for certain densities and temperatures, generally gives an implausibly young age for the Local Bubble ($\la 6 \times 10^5$ yr).

astro-ph↗