The HI environment of the Sculptor dwarf spheroidal galaxy

Abstract

New observations of the neutral hydrogen (HI) in and around the line of sight of the Sculptor dwarf spheroidal (dSph) are presented. The data obtained with the single-dish Parkes telescope cover a large area of 7\degr x 7\degr in the direction of the dwarf, and have resolutions of 15\farcm x 1.12 km/s. The Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) was used to map a smaller area of 2\degr x 2\degr centered on the direction of the dwarf with higher resolutions (350\arcsec x 140\arcsec x 1.65 km/s). Many HI structures having velocities outside the range of the normal Galactic disk velocities were detected, including the two Sculptor clouds (northeast and southwest) of Carignan et al. (1998, C98). The present study shows the total extent of the C98 clouds. We derived heliocentric radial velocities for the NE and SW clouds of 100.2\pm 0.9 km/s and 105.1\pm 0.3 km/s, respectively. The intensity-weighted mean HI velocity for both clouds is 104.1\pm 0.4 km/s. The mass of each cloud is (4.1\pm 0.2) x 10^4 M_\odot (NE cloud) and (1.93\pm 0.02) x 10^5 M_\odot (SW cloud) at the Sculptor dSph distance (79 kpc).