Direct emission maps of cool gas in a star forming, low mass galaxy: connecting spatially resolved galactic processes to the CGM

Abstract

Observing the cycling of baryons in and out of galaxies, which largely takes places in the circumgalactic medium (CGM), is key to understanding how galaxies grow and evolve. This is especially true for dwarf galaxies, whose shallow potential wells produce even more effective feedback than more massive haloes, and whose cold virial temperatures imply the possibility of a CGM rich in cold accretion, in which gas efficiently inflows and settles, perhaps explaining the degree to which nearly all isolated dwarf galaxies are actively star forming. Understanding how baryons cycle in and out of dwarf galaxies is thus essential for understanding how these galaxies connect to their large scale environment, and is now tractable with recent and upcoming state-of-the-art instrumentation. I will present sub-kiloparsec scale resolution integral field spectroscopy of emission lines mapping cool ionized gas inside and close to the optical extent of a star forming, low mass (M*~10^8 Msun) galaxy out to 10 kpc. This high spatial and spectral resolution data will be combined with the large scale gas distribution of diffuse, ionized gas on scales up to 1 degree (~200 kpc) with the one thousand lens, narrowband upgrade of the Dragonfly telephoto array concept. I will show results of the spatial distribution, kinematics, and ionization properties of gas in the galaxy itself and its inner and outer CGM and additionally provide insight into the degree of cospatiality of neutral to ionized extragalactic hydrogen in the outskirts of this low mass galaxy, connecting galactic processes such as star formation and feedback to those occurring in the CGM.