Far-UV spectra of Galactic corona sight lines

We present a study of the properties of the transition temperature (T~10^5^K) gas in the Milky Way corona, based on the measurements of OVI, NV, CIV, SiIV, and FeIII absorption lines seen in the far-ultraviolet spectra of 58 sight lines to extragalactic targets, obtained with the Far-Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. In many sight lines the Galactic absorption profiles show multiple components, which are analyzed separately.

We find that the highly ionized atoms are distributed irregularly in a layer with a scale height of about 3 kpc, which rotates along with the gas in the disk, without an obvious gradient in the rotation velocity away from the Galactic plane. Within this layer the gas has randomly oriented velocities with a dispersion of 40-60km/s. On average the integrated column densities are logN(OVI)=14.3, logN(NV)=13.5, logN(CIV)=14.2, logN(SiIV)=13.6, and logN(FeIII)=14.2, with a dispersion of just 0.2 dex in each case.