Stellar mass loss and the Intra-Cluster Medium in Galactic globular clusters: a deep radio survey for HI and OH

Abstract

We present the results of a survey, the deepest to date, for HI emission at 21 cm and OH emission at 18 cm (lines at 1612, 1665, 1667 and 1720 MHz) in the direction towards the Galactic globular clusters M 15, M 2, NGC 6934, NGC 7006 and Pal 13. The aim is to measure the amount of hydrogen in the intra-cluster medium (ICM), and to find OH masers in the circumstellar envelopes of globular cluster red giants. We present a tentative detection of 0.3 Msun of neutral hydrogen in M 15 and possible detections of neutral hydrogen in M 2 and Pal 13. We derive upper limits to the neutral hydrogen content of NGC 6934 and NGC 7006. No OH emission is detected. We also present deep HI data of the northern tip of the Magellanic Stream behind Pal 13.