Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 724, Issue 2, Pages 1551-1560Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/724/2/1551
Keywords
diffuse radiation; ISM: individual objects (LDN 1780); scattering
Categories
Funding
- NASA
- NSF
- AstroDon
- RC Optical Systems
- Santa Barbara Instrument Group
- Software Bisque
- New Mexico Skies
- University of Toledo
- Division Of Physics
- Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien [1004649] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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The diffuse high-latitude H alpha background is widely believed to be predominantly the result of in situ recombination of ionized hydrogen in the warm interstellar medium of the Galaxy. Instead, we show that both a substantial fraction of the diffuse high-latitude H alpha intensity in regions dominated by Galactic cirrus dust and much of the variance in the high-latitude H alpha background are the result of scattering by interstellar dust of H alpha photons originating elsewhere in the Galaxy. We provide an empirical relation, which relates the expected scattered H alpha intensity to the IRAS 100 mu m diffuse background intensity, applicable to about 81% of the entire sky. The assumption commonly made in reductions of cosmic microwave background observations, namely that the observed all-sky map of diffuse H alpha light is a suitable template for Galactic free-free foreground emission, is found to be in need of reexamination.
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