New Results Concerning the Local Interstellar Medium: Structure, Dynamics, and Radio Scintillation

by Jeff Linsky (JILA, Univ. Colorado)

Friday 12 Oct 2007, 10:30 → 11:30 Europe/Stockholm

FA31

I will present new results concerning the interstellar medium within 15 parsecs of the Sun. The analysis of high resolution ultraviolet spectra for the lines of sight toward a large number of nearby stars provides radial measurements that are consistent with 15 velocity vectors describing the flow of gas in warm interstellar clouds. This work provides new and very interesting information on the dynamics and physical properties of these clouds and locations in the sky where cloud-cloud interactions may occur. One unexpected result is that the large amplitude radio scintillation observed toward several AGN and pulsars can now be simply explained by turbulence where nearby clouds interact.